Nine Lives of Saimatsu
by signelchan
Summary: Nine different universes, nine different scenarios, nine different ways that Shuichi and Kaede learn to appreciate each other, and oftentimes fall in love (or find themselves already in love) in the process. [Saimatsu Week 2019 Fic Compilation]
1. The Inventor and the Astronaut

"For the last time, I'm not sure I can really, uh, do that for you." They'd only been in the killing game for a few days and people's minds were already starting to get lost with the looming deadline over their heads regarding life or death. Escape plans had been concocted and shut down (just mentioning how long they'd been forced to spend trying to go through the pipes underground was enough to get everyone collectively groaning), and yet no one had fully accepted that there was going to need to be _one_ death before _everyone_ died instead. That led to the current situation, Kaede sitting in the dining room with her goggles over her eyes, trying to avoid everyone's melancholy attitudes but getting sucked into them because a group of the others would not leave her alone. As the Ultimate Inventor, everyone seemed to have it in their minds that she could build a machine to stop the coming apocalypse, that she could create something with her hands and the scant materials in their prison that would circumvent everything trapping them there.

And the others were relentless with their insistence that she could, in fact, make it happen, which led to her being surrounded by two members of the group that had not left her alone about her talent since the death deadline had been announced. "I know you've got to be smart enough to do it," Kokichi said to her, leaning in close with his fingers gently tapping against each other, keeping them close to his face and the musical note-patterned scarf around his neck. "You can't have that kind of title and be a complete idiot."

"I'm not an idiot, but you're asking things of me that aren't possible. Even the brightest of geniuses, which some people consider me to be, can't make miracles happen in a handful of days without some real materials available." Thinking about the little laboratory outside the main building that she could go retreat to, Kaede had to keep a straight face behind her goggles and not make it completely obvious that she was over this grilling session. "You're pushing me to do the impossible."

"It's only the impossible if you—oh, ow, why are you…?" Whatever smart remark Kokichi was going to make was stopped when he was lifted up by the back of the scarf by the physically-intimidating man behind him, Gonta doing the honors of picking him up and carrying him away so that he couldn't do much more heckling. Kaede was thankful that there were people with that sort of innate physical strength in the world (she couldn't achieve such feats without the use of machinery), but she kind of wished that Gonta didn't have an unappealing title like Supreme Leader that sent up red-flags in her mind about what kinds of things he could do with that strength. She could use an assistant in a place like where they were, and while he would have the job in a heartbeat if he wanted it, she didn't quite think she could trust him.

With the two of them out of her face she could breathe a little easier, but that didn't mean she had the room to herself by any means. Part of why she'd insisted on having her goggles on while inside was because of the stone-faced detective standing against the wall across the room, and before she'd started wearing them she'd keep glancing over to see Maki's glare meeting with hers, and the deadly coldness she felt from it make her uncomfortable. She knew that Maki was planning something, she was too savvy to life-or-death situations not to be doing so, but she kind of hoped that inventions weren't going to be necessary for whatever her plan was. The longer she could go without having to flex her actual inventing muscles the better, in her opinion, and with everyone asking her to build things that they thought would help with the problem they were facing Kaede wasn't quite sure how long she'd be able to last.

Also in the room, and also someone she was actively trying to avoid eye contact with, was the scantily-clad self-proclaimed cosplay "queen" Miu, sitting at the other end of the table with her barely-restrained chest resting on top of her arms as she tried shoving it at anyone who was talking to her. Right at that moment her poor victim was Rantaro, who she'd heard approach her asking if she had anything he could do for her as everyone's maid, and every time she looked over there she could see how uncomfortable he was at Miu's antics. If she wanted to step in, she would have been able to at least distract her long enough to let him get away, but she wasn't sure she wanted to get into the battle of who had the better bust a second time, even if it was lighthearted compared to everything else going on.

The only others present were Tenko and Himiko, who had been having a discussion that Kaede had been able to overhear parts of at times when it had been most active. That was because sometimes Tenko would start yelling out whatever she was saying, her trademark being that she was loud, she was brash, and that she would slip into third person to refer to herself on occasion. Himiko was much quieter, and seemed bored with everything going on around her, but she'd been tagging along with Tenko pestering her with questions every time they were seen together. It made some sense that someone interested in cultures would be interested in someone who spent more time outside among insects than around people, and Kaede was sure their full conversations were lovely, but their current situation wasn't exactly one where making friends was a plus.

An itch started to form in her hands, the desire to create something beginning to take over, and without much fanfare Kaede stood up from her spot and headed outside, her destination quite obviously her little lab to start work on something, anything. When she was about halfway there she heard footsteps behind her and she stopped walking, turning around to see who was following her. She'd expected it to be Maki, in all honesty, due to how she'd been watching her while inside, but if it was Kokichi again she would have understood that as well; it was a pleasant surprise to see that instead it was Shuichi, who seemed shocked to have been caught. "You could use to walk a bit quieter, I would've never guessed you were there if I didn't hear your feet on the dirt," she said to him, right as he opened his mouth to say something to her. "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt whatever you were going to tell me, go ahead."

"N-no, it's fine, I didn't mean to be following you but I had this idea that I wanted to run by you." Exactly as withdrawn as he'd been when they'd first met, Shuichi was curling up into himself as he thought through what he wanted to say to her, but he stood up tall right as she was about to blow him off and get to what she wanted to do. "I heard that everyone's been bugging you about ways to get out of here, and I want to tell you that I'm not here for that."

"That's good," she replied, smiling a bit before fiddling with her goggles, which she'd moved to the top of her head while she'd been walking by herself. "No one's had a good idea yet, anyway. I can't build world-destroying missiles, I can't craft military-grade explosives out of what I've got, I'm not even allowed to modify our sentient robot without her consent, everyone's just throwing dumb ideas at me at this point."

His eyes flashed with excitement for a second, a strange sight to see on Shuichi's face, but he went right back to looking like he wanted to get out of the conversation he'd unintentionally started. "My idea's probably dumb too, but it…but I…think it would be nice to see happen, before we die."

"Pessimistic, aren't we?"

"I like to think it's realistic, but I guess it might be a little pessimistic too." Shuichi scuffed the dirt path with the toes of one of his shoes for a moment, before putting his foot down and coughing at the dust he'd kicked up. "Uh, anyway, can we go into your lab to talk about this? I don't need someone walking up and hearing me, especially not someone who'll pinch my cheek and tell me they're proud seeing me talking to someone who isn't them."

A list of possible people that he was referring to crossed Kaede's mind, but she immediately stopped trying to guess when she realized that he'd just asked to speak with her privately. In a place where no one else would be but them. "I guess we can do that, sure, if you really want to," she replied hastily, not wanting him to change his mind and back out of the suggestion, "and if you're trying to avoid someone it's best if we go, like, right now. So, shall we do that?"

He gave a firm nod as his response and began making his way down the path before she even thought to start moving, allowing for her to watch him as he passed. His jacket was covered in patches from foreign space programs, with a large spot on the back that was completely bare, which she could only assume was done while he waited for a patch of his own, and she smiled at the idea of that shy boy going up into space. If anything, he'd at least have the focus for the task, but he might not have exactly been the kind of face officials would want to advertise. In the time she was thinking about his jacket, he was able to get several paces ahead of her, and when she started moving she had to do a half-jog to catch back up with him, her hair blowing behind her at her speed. They walked to the lab in silence, him moving briskly and her keeping up with him step-for-step, until they were standing right outside the door.

The building looked like it had been abandoned for ages and had once seen much, much better days, but it was labeled as the Ultimate Inventor's Lab and Kaede was going to use it as much as she could, to pass the time while in captivity. The moment she opened the door he slid inside before she could, making her follow him once more, him going through turning the lights on while she closed the door behind herself. "Thanks for being willing to hear me out on my terms," he said, sounding like he was speaking half-heartedly, and for a moment she wondered if he was going to use the privacy to murder her. There were tools around that he could wield to do the job, but at the same time, far too many people were interested in getting inventions that her death would be discovered quickly. "It's really a dumb request but I…"

"You want me to hear you out about it, I get you." Leaning against the door to make sure no one could open it from the outside, Kaede put her hands on her hips and leaned slightly forward, closer to Shuichi. "Lay it on me, I don't have all day to wait for you to talk. I'm a busy person with busy things happening."

He hesitated for a moment, visibly flinching at how she was expecting his reason for why they were in there together quickly, but he swallowed down his reservations and went for it with relative ease. "So you know how we're going to die here, right?" he started, to which she rolled her eyes, the act of which made him awkwardly laugh. "Right, pessimism, need to work on that. But we're not sure if we're going to survive whatever's happening here, and I…I've always wanted to go to space. That's, well, my goal in life, being the Ultimate Astronaut and all that, and if I die here I'm not going to achieve that goal."

"I don't think I get where you're going with this, sorry." Actually, Kaede was plenty smart enough to know exactly where Shuichi was headed, and she was more amused than anything by the fact that he'd approached her with something so dumb and pointless in a time of moderate crisis. "If you want me to do anything, you've got to tell me, in your big words, what you need."

Once again he flinched, but this time the action came with him turning around, gesturing to the blank space on his back that she'd noticed beforehand. (Mentally, she was praising herself for being so observant as to have already called the meaning of everything, but physically she couldn't show it.) "I want you to build me a spaceship so I can go to space on my own terms. It would be nice, even though I won't get an official badge saying I made it up to the stars like all these other people did."

"Okay, pretend I'm going to humor your request. How do you get to space when there's a giant wall trapping us in here?" The concept of building a single-man spacecraft that was worthy of flight wasn't even daunting to Kaede, that's how confident in her own invention and building abilities she was, but the physical barrier between them and the clouds was once again rearing its ugly head. "Sorry, Shuichi, but I don't think I can actually get you into orbit while we're here."

"I figured you'd say that," he replied, physically deflating as he turned back to face her. "It was just wishful thinking, really, but thanks for hearing me out. Next time I'll listen to Maki when she tells me that I shouldn't waste your time with pointless requests."

As if on cue, there was a knock at the door behind Kaede's back, and when she opened it, it was the Detective herself standing there, looking unamused as she saw Shuichi in the building already. "Oh damn it," Maki spat, again as if it was intentionally planned, "I told you that she wasn't going to build you a spaceship, why didn't you listen to me when I said it?"

"Because I wanted to believe it could happen." Shuichi was so timid that going toe-to-toe with someone as forceful and intimidating as Maki was somewhat one-sided in the other person's favor, but hearing him be told off made Kaede's heart hurt. "But she said she can't, so that's the end of it."

"Hey, I never said—"

"Ignore him." Cutting Kaede off as she was trying to explain to Shuichi that she only said she couldn't get him to orbit, she never said that she couldn't build the spaceship, Maki held out a pack of disposable cameras, nearly pushing them into Kaede's face so that she could see them. "I need to talk to you about modifying these. I've got an idea that might actually be worth something, and no space case is going to get in my way of you helping me."

"—geez, pushy, aren't you?" Using a single finger to get the cameras out of her face a bit, Kaede felt bad about having to listen to someone else's request while in the presence of someone who she'd just denied, but she also didn't want to make matters worse and tell Shuichi to get lost. That was fine, as Maki quickly handled that part of the situation, and the second it was just the two ladies there in the room she was explaining, in great detail, what her plan with the cameras (and some other things she'd stashed in the pockets of her jacket) entailed, but Kaede was only half listening to what she was being told. Her mind was on Shuichi and how she needed to set things right with him and his request, even if it killed one or both of them to make it happen.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Kaede, her involvement with the cameras and the sensors that Maki had brought to her was part of a much larger plan that resulted in everyone finding a body laying on the floor in the library, the poor mysterious Kirumi dead from a blow to the back of her head. This resulted in the cameras and the pictures they produced becoming a huge clue to solving the murder, and for several moments in the whole trial that followed the investigation Kaede was convinced that she'd aided in showing that the person she'd helped had committed the crime. But it wasn't Maki who had the blood on her hands, and actually there wasn't anyone who _really_ touched the victim to kill her, which the pictures did wonders at proving.

When all was said and done, they had their murderer cornered, and the motive completely laid out for everyone to see and understand. As it turned out, Maki _had_ caused for the murderer to act how they did, as they'd been following her around and listening in on her private conversations with the others with their ears trained for hearing specific sounds, taking note of what she was guessing was going on and making their own plan on how to help her solve it. "I only wanted to end this game before it really got started," Kokichi admitted with a faked sniffle, no one able to tell if he was speaking the truth or not about his intentions, but knowing with certainty that the overall story produced was true enough.

At any rate, after he was forcefully and brutally executed (much to everyone's shock and horror, even though he was a murderer), the mood among the remaining people was a lot more solemn for a while. Things were different without Kokichi and his constant appearance and his oftentimes obnoxious behavior, and while there were people who attempted to fill that void, no one was quite able to reach the levels of entertainment that he often achieved. The time after the first murder was one where more people began to get to know each other, more people started finding out who they liked and who they didn't, and most importantly, it was the time where Kaede was able to once again talk to Shuichi about his spaceship idea.

It happened in the dining area, which was bustling with activity as Rantaro was making sure everyone was fed and wearing clean clothes while they were sitting in there, and the moment he'd left Kaede alone she turned to Shuichi, who was absentmindedly picking at his food, and she smiled at him. "Long time no talk," she started, getting his attention and watching him try to slide his plate away from where she was. "Whoa there, you don't have to run and hide. I'm talking to you on friendly terms."

"I'm not interested in your 'friendly terms', not when I know you're just going to make fun of what I said again." It was clear that their last one-on-one interaction was still fresh in his mind, and Kaede wanted to make sure he didn't think that there was anything he'd said that was wrong. That was hard when he was convinced that there was, though. "I get it, there's no way you can build a spaceship and it was stupid for me to ask you to do it."

"Except I never said I couldn't build a ship, just that I couldn't put you into orbit, but that's just specifics, isn't it?" The grin that she put on came at the same time that he started understanding what she'd said, and the look of surprise on his face was one she wished she could capture forever.

"You mean that?" he asked, to which she nodded. "No way, you wouldn't really be able to do that, would you?" Another nod, met with his gasp of disbelief. "You're amazing, Kaede! I'd give almost anything for you to do that, if you really would do it!"

At that she shrugged, having not thought much about if she _would_ do it, just that she _could_ if she wanted to. "Guess we'll have to see what happens, huh?" she said, twirling a lock of her hair around her finger to play innocent, even though Shuichi looked like he was about to jump out of his seat and tackle her in excitement. "At least now you know I can do it if you really earn it, but we've got to see if that happens."

They were in the middle of a killing game, after all, and it was completely possible that neither of them would live past the next murder. They did, of course, and the one after that, although things in their personal lives were much different by the time they were three executions into the whole ordeal. He was a lot shakier, more skittish around everyone whenever they approached him at random, but for Kaede (and select others) he'd put on a smile and act like everything was fine. She was focused on something new, mostly outside of her own lab, with the idea of putting an end to the person who she knew could easily dispose of every single other person present if given the chance, but she couldn't let everyone know that's what her goal was. It was devious and dirty, but in order to save everyone she had to take that risk and make it work.

She was back in her lab tinkering with something she needed for her other project when she heard someone knock at the door, followed by Shuichi walking in anyway. His hand was covering his mouth and as he came closer to where she was furiously working, the smell of blood began to fill her nose. "Wh-what's going on?" she asked, looking up at him and seeing that there was blood seeping through the cracks between his fingers, his eyes looking apologetic at what he'd brought in to her. "Oh geez, let me clean you up real fast! Who were you fighting with? Gonta? Figured he'd be able to knock your head clean off your shoulders if he fought you, but obviously that didn't happen. Asshole, he needs to control his strength better before he murders someone with it."

Shuichi didn't reply until the blood was cleared from his face, at which point she noticed that he didn't have any marks or wounds anywhere around his mouth. "It wasn't Gonta, don't worry. Forget you even saw it, really. I came here to talk to you about whatever you've been doing and then…yeah, just forget about what you saw."

"I don't know how well I can do that, but sure thing. What have you heard about what I've been doing?" The sight of him with a bloodied face was still fresh in her mind, and even though she knew she should have listened to him she hadn't been convinced that it hadn't been Gonta who'd caused the problem. He was mentioning her activities with the computers they'd found, talking about how it seemed suspicious that she wasn't saying a word about what she was doing there, and she couldn't help but laugh at the idea he was presenting. Not because she thought it was absurd to assume she was trying to hurt someone with that project, because she was in fact attempting to do just that, but because of something very specific to Shuichi himself. "Here I was, figuring you were coming here to grill me about the giant project I've been working on back in here, but no, you're asking about the computers. How predictable."

"You're working on something here?" he asked, surprised to hear her mention it, and she decided that then was a perfect time to show him what she'd been building in her spare time, a project she'd taken up in the immediate aftermath of the second murder. If they weren't allowed to have fun magic shows without murder, she wasn't going to let herself look for enjoyment outside of building things in her lab, she'd decided then. Carefully she led him through the disaster that was the interior of the building, coming up to a tarp she'd hung from the ceiling; as he watched, she yanked the tarp down and revealed a small-sized spaceship there in the lab, non-functional but getting there. "No way, there's no actual way you built this here. You're kidding."

"I told you I could, and after Rantaro snapped or whatever and killed Angie just because he wanted to, I figured I should do something good with my time." She dramatically flourished her hands towards the ship, watching Shuichi's eyes light up in delight. "You can climb in, there's working seats and equipment, I just don't have the fuel to make it run. What a shame, I bet it'd make it to orbit faster than any other ship in existence."

"That's amazing, Kaede, thank you!" Without thinking about what he was doing, Shuichi grabbed her hand and gently kissed the top of it, before pushing it away and climbing into the ship, taking a look at its interior while she was left reeling from his quick display of affection. She knew he'd done it because he was grateful, but that kiss was the first genuinely romantic thing anyone had done for her, ever, and she was in awe of it. That wasn't something she was going to admit to, however, and especially not to him. The last thing she needed was for him to close off his emotions towards her after he'd opened them in the first place, and she was happy that he was happy. No romance was needed.

But still…in her heart she wished that there was more to it, and she told herself that after she'd stopped Gonta, after she'd protected everyone with her digital world, she'd talk to him about those romantic overtones and let them become something more.

Except there was never going to be a time for them to have that conversation, not when she ended up on the bad side of her own program and was felled by someone pushed by the person she was trying to stop in the first place. If it were a different universe, the death of the Ultimate Inventor would have been laughable, a humorous point, but in their world, it was one of genuine distress and despair—exactly what the person in charge of things wanted from the scenario. Her death brought pain and longing to Shuichi's heart, and when he managed to avenge her against his will in the following murder, he was able to let her statement come true: her spaceship certainly _did_ reach orbit faster than any before it.

* * *

**A/N: and so begins my posting of 10 of the 11 prompts for Saimatsu Week this week! (The one I am not posting a fic for is wedding, because I've already posted a wedding fic for the pair and I'm never topping that, lol.)**


	2. If the Clothes Fit

The game had been lovingly labeled "drink or dare" when it had been suggested, but as there wasn't a single participant present who could buy anything for them to be drinking, it became more like truth or dare than they'd wanted it to be. The initial idea had been that there be some kind of punishment for not wanting to take part in the dares, hence the addition of alcohol, but because no one was able to purchase the liquor to make that happen, it ended up more along the lines of rapid-fire dares being thrown out at everyone, and whenever someone backed down from what they were challenged they had to take a shot of vinegar or pickle juice instead. Since no one really wanted to do that, as there was no buzz anyone would get off of those drinks, the dares typically stuck.

They were just coming off of the collective laughing fit caused by everyone watching as they'd just watched Miu give a raunchy and suggestive performance as a dog, drinking water from a bowl that had been set on the floor for that very purpose, when she, face dripping wet, pointed at the couple who'd stayed the quietest during the laughter. "You two, switch clothes and make it sexy!" she commanded, the people directly in front of her being splattered with the excess water coming off of her face. "I won't let me be the biggest laughingstock here, so you can do it!"

All eyes followed her pointed fingers, until they were looking at the victims of her ire, the quickly-blushing Kaede and Shuichi, who were letting the dare they'd just been handed sink in. "That sounds…easy enough," Kaede quietly said, seeing that she was one-half of where everyone was focusing, laughter beginning to kick up again. "I mean, it may not be 'sexy' like she wants, but we can do it, right?"

Stunned speechless at what he was hearing, Shuichi could barely manage a nod before Miu was barking more commands at them. "We'll let you do it in private, but everything's gotta come off and switch between you! That's right, I'm telling you to strip down to bare-ass naked and wear everything the other's got on. Better hope neither of you are wearing embarrassing underwear!"

"I think you're being too harsh on them," Maki scolded, her eyes the only pair switching off of the couple and back to Miu. "Must be because you know no one would ever want to wear your infection-ridden underwear, huh?"

At the insult, Miu backed down from her confident behavior and began stammering like a fool, but just because she'd moved on in terms of attention didn't mean that everyone else had. "All right, looks like my sidekick's going to be scoping out a curvy gal tonight!" Kaito called out, pumping a fist in the air, and his excitement opened the door for several others to state their positives of the scenario. None of those were exactly helpful to the couple, though, as the reality of what they were being expected to do was quickly sinking in and now they were going to have to actually do it, or drink something nasty to pay for chickening out.

After the crowd died down, they took their leave, sneaking off to the closest bathroom to make the clothing swap. Once inside, Shuichi finally found his voice and said, breathlessly, "I don't think I can do this, Kaede. There's no way that I can."

"What's the problem?" she asked, as she began taking off her shirt, revealing her pale pink, lace-trimmed bra underneath. "It's not going to be too hard for you. For me, now that's where it's going to be hard, but we can do this! Together!" Once her shirt was over her head she handed it in his direction, expecting him to take it, but the way he was shaking standing in front of her, his face beet-red and his eyes fixed on the floor, she knew he wasn't going to be grabbing anything. "What's the matter, Shuichi? Can you tell me?"

"It's just that…I've never seen you in anything less than a swimsuit," he replied, his voice trembling with every word. "And now I'm going to see you wearing even less than that, and you're going to see _me_ wearing less than that, and I…don't know if I'm ready for either part of that."

"Hmm…I see your point!" Dropping her shirt so that she could clasp her hands together, Kaede gave a little bounce, and every part of her that could bounced with her, now that she didn't have a top on restraining it. "But seriously, it's okay, I know this is super awkward and Miu only did this to us because we're together and she thinks people who are together should be comfortable naked around each other. I'm a bit scared to do this too, especially since, well, I'm not exactly as small as you are. I'm worried I'm going to rip your clothes by trying to wear them."

"N-no, you wouldn't do that, don't worry!" At once, Shuichi's eyes shot upward, meeting with Kaede's comforting gaze without intending to. He could see that she was trying to be supportive of him while she was scared herself, and he wished that he was able to calm her fears and his own at the same time. I think you're right, though, we can do this together. We just have to swap, show everyone, and swap back, that's all."

She nodded, before bending down to pick her shirt back up off the ground to try offering it to him a second time. While she was down, he unzipped his jacket and took it off, and was beginning to work on his own shirt when he saw Kaede standing back up, her shirt in her hands. That caused him to speed up, so that they could make a seamless trade between them. "Don't put that on quite yet!" she reminded him, as she oriented his shirt so that the front would be on the right side when she put it on herself. "I'll get you my bra, hold on."

The thought of having to actually wear a bra, if even for just a few minutes for their friends to all get to laugh at them, made Shuichi tense up, but he gave her a couple quick nods, before his eyes got the best of him and he looked at how it fit on her body. While he loved Kaede for all sorts of things, her appearance was one of his favorite parts of her, complete with her curves that made for her hugs to be quite soft and comforting. She was never afraid to show those curves, typically with shirts that clung somewhat tightly to them, but on occasion she'd let her shirt ride up without realizing it and expose some of the pudginess that gave her hips and sides their shape. And there she was, standing in front of him with her shirt off, but with his around her neck ready to be put all the way on, every inch of her stomach and a good amount of her chest on display.

As any young adult would do in that specific situation, Shuichi found himself staring almost exclusively at her chest, at the light lace that framed her bra, but somewhat wishing he could see what was underneath it. That thought alone was enough to stir something inside of him, and he had to close his eyes tightly to stop thinking more about it, but the image was seared into his mind. "Oh, they're not that scary to look at," she teasingly said, and he could hear the movement of fabric right across from him, only to suddenly feel her pressing up against his front with nothing but exposed skin. "But here, I'll get it on you and then you can put the shirt on, and that way we're halfway done already!"

He had no time to tell her that he was getting highly flustered at her actions, but when she backed off moments later and he could feel the remaining fabric hanging off of his lean body, he had to tell her something. "Er, thanks for that, Kaede," he mumbled, opening his eyes and looking down at himself, seeing her bra on his body and feeling incredibly awkward for it. "I don't think I'd know how to put it on myself."

"That's why I did it for you!" she chirped in response, before giving a low groan at something he couldn't see. When he looked back over at her, he saw that she'd gotten his shirt completely on, and it was clearly straining to stay in one piece over her chest. "Of course Miu would want me to wear something as tight as she would, that makes perfect sense," she huffed, reaching for where Shuichi had put his jacket so she could cover herself with that. If anything, they knew that his baggy jacket would fit her comfortably, but he was beginning to worry that he wouldn't have much of a shirt to return to when their dare was complete.

As he put her shirt on himself, it hanging like a limp cloth off of his shoulders and sinking into the empty bra in places, she was working on getting her skirt off, again offering it over to him when it was in her hand. The thought of wearing it was making him even more flustered than he already was, and he completely turned away from her to keep his current state from being super apparent. "Can we do this facing away from each other?" he asked, his mind running to the fact that if they were looking in the other's general direction, it would be nearly impossible to not see parts of each other they hadn't seen before. "I don't know if I can handle doing this looking at you."

"I mean, that's an idea!" The next thing he knew, she had tossed her skirt over him, it hitting the door he was now facing and falling to the floor, followed quickly by what was undeniably the matching underwear to go with her bra. "There, now give me what you're wearing, I promise I won't look!" He sputtered, trying to verbalize how awkward this all was for him, but he slowly stepped out of his pants and tossed them over his shoulder to get them to her. Next needed to come his boxers, but he was crippled with the fear that those also wouldn't survive to make it back to him that he very nearly called for the whole charade to end right there. But Kaede was so committed that he couldn't back out, and so he got the boxers off and tossed them as well.

In relative silence they put the other's clothing on, the only sounds being the small groans and whines that Kaede was making as she struggled to get herself redressed, her finding it quite hard to put on something meant for someone slim and narrow when she was as curvy as she was. Shuichi had no problems getting her underwear and skirt on himself, but he had to hold them in place at his hip to keep them from both falling back to the floor and exposing him from the waist down to the elements. He was dressed, but he wasn't going to turn to look at her to see how she looked until she made the move to let him know she was ready. "I hate this so much," he grumbled, adjusting his hand a bit higher to preserve as much of his dignity as he could. "It's not fair that we have to do this."

"It's not fair, but—oops!" Her final word was spoken in time with the unmistakable sound of a large rip, and without thinking about it Shuichi spun on his toes to see what had happened. There he saw Kaede with his pants halfway up her thighs, bent over as she was trying to get them all the way up, and she was turning bright red at whatever had just happened. "I leaned a bit too far too fast and I think that was both underarms on your shirt punishing me for trying to get these pants on," she admitted, before biting her lip hard and sniffling. "I'm so sorry, Shuichi, I should've realized this wouldn't work and stopped before it happened."

Before she could start crying he jumped to comfort her, grabbing her into as much of a hug as he could with how they were positioned. "Don't worry about it," he told her, trying to soothe her upset soul as fast as he could. "I understand that you wanted to make Miu eat her words, and I could've said no, too." He could feel the skirt and underwear starting to slide down his legs, so he spread his stance to try and hold them in place now that he didn't have a free hand for it. "Neither of us wear anything that's exactly made for the other."

"But you didn't just rip through some of my clothes, that's different." The sadness was tangible in Kaede's voice, but at least she didn't sound like she was speaking through tears. "I guess I just thought that maybe it would all work perfectly and Miu would realize that she was stupid to make us do this, but I guess…I guess I was the stupid one for believing that I would be small enough to fit in your clothes."

"Please don't beat yourself up over that," Shuichi said after giving his words a quick thought. However he chose to word what he was going to tell her, it was going to show how he cared about her, and he needed to make it count. "I think you got far enough into it that we can show everyone what we did, and then we can change back and things will be fine. Your legs are…mostly covered, so it's not like people will see anything they wouldn't see otherwise."

She gave a small nod, before trying to stand up to her full height, causing him to have to back up with an awkward shuffle until he got a hand back to hold the skirt up. "You're right, Shuichi, thank you," she said to him with a smile, her eyes clearly teary. "I think we've gotten close enough to being in the other's close for Miu's dare to have been fulfilled, so maybe we could go show everyone now."

Since they'd both had the same idea, more or less, they made their way out of the bathroom as best as they could, with him having to take small steps to keep the skirt from falling, and her barely able to walk at all with the pants constricting her thighs. But they made it to where their friends had been waiting for the ten minutes or so they'd been gone, and once everyone saw how they'd really gone through with changing, there was applause and cheering at the sight. Of course, a couple people called out crude remarks about what could have transpired there in the bathroom, all of which were ignored, but for the most part everyone seemed amused with what had happened.

"Ugh, whatever," Miu spat, seeing that her dare had blown up in her face. "A-cow-matsu there can make the next dare, see if I care."

"I'll gladly do it," Kaede replied, trying to sound like the insulting name hadn't bothered her at all. "Just give me the time to change back into my clothes before I come up with one, because I've got nothing right now." She turned around as fast as she could and started back towards the bathroom, but Shuichi wasn't immediately following her. He could hear Miu starting to snicker as she watched Kaede leaving, and he wanted to be able to defend his girlfriend's honor in her absence.

That plan was thwarted, though, after Kaito gently put a hand on his shoulder, leaned in close to him, and then loudly said, "Don't know if you wanna hear this right now, bud, but you, uh, lost your undies."

Embarrassment washed over Shuichi as he looked down and saw what was unmistakably Kaede's pale pink underwear down on the floor, hugging his ankles. He yelped, squatting down to pick them back up, as everyone there burst into heavy laughter at the sight, and once he had all of the clothing he was supposed to be wearing back properly on his body, he was chasing after Kaede, hoping that she hadn't heard what had just happened. They met back up in the bathroom, but when he arrived he could hear her crying inside, which led to him opening the door a crack and peering in to see if she was decent. He could see his jacket balled up on the counter, and her fiddling with the ripped sides of his shirt, and as long as she was still wearing pants he felt comfortable entering.

"I should've known she was forcing me to do this to make a fat joke," Kaede choked out between sobs, making Shuichi's heart wrench at the sound. "It's not even fair, I don't deserve that kind of treatment, she's just jealous of me, isn't she?"

He couldn't answer that, but he certainly could give her a hug with the one free arm he had, the other one occupied by holding his skirt up still. "She insults everyone all the time, she just went a bit over the line on this one," he said, bringing his head to rest on her shoulder as she let out another cry. "I'm not sure that your size has anything to do with it, but it definitely is fodder for her nastiness."

"I'm going to make her pay for that." Even though she was crying, there was a tone of determination in Kaede's voice, as she slowly turned her head to look at Shuichi, as he lifted his own to meet her gaze. "In kindness, I mean. I'm not going to make her squeeze that large chest of hers into someone else's shirt and ruin their clothing. How do you think she'll like it if I tell her she's got to play an expert-level piano piece without practice?"

"She'll say that she's smart enough to figure it out without any problems, and then she'll fail and blame the piano, probably," he replied, amused at how Kaede's mind went right to thinking about music. When he saw her smile and nod in agreement, he knew that she was moving past the blow to her confidence that Miu's rudeness had caused. "Anyway, let's switch back into what clothing we can so that you can dish that dare to her. I'm excited to see her face when she realizes you're not going easy on her."

"I am too!" There was a pause, where Kaede's eyes widened while still locked with Shuichi's, before she leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, which had his blush from before resuming in full force. "Thanks for being so understanding, Shuichi. You're the best boyfriend a girl can ask for, even when wearing my clothes."

"I-I'll take that as a compliment, thanks."


	3. Two Dear Careers

Adult life had a funny way of keeping people apart when they needed most to be together. It genuinely pained Shuichi to be unable to go with Kaede when she was taking a week-long trip overseas for a concert that she had been invited to due to his own workload, and because of the nature of his job he couldn't ask to reschedule or just reassign his case to someone else. If anyone was going to solve the specific crime he was working on, it was going to be him and him alone, and so the sacrifice had to be made: did he let the case fall to the wayside to be with his wife, or did he let her go off on her own this once and watch everything from afar? The choice wasn't one he really had a say in, because ignoring solving the case had serious repercussions that he didn't want to deal with, and so he had to kiss her farewell at the airport with the promise that he'd be there waiting for her when she got back.

"I don't blame you for not going, don't worry," she told him before she was whisked off towards her private plane, carrying only her, the assistants that worked with her, and the piano that she insisted on using for any and all public shows she did. Her last words that he heard her say was a rushed message of love and devotion, and a reminder of the promise he'd just made her, that he'd be waiting for her upon her return.

That week dragged on and on in his mind, as he spent every day hanging around the detective agency, working on piecing together the clues he'd gathered for his case during the investigation, and every night in an empty home that would normally be bursting with both love and music. Kaede's personal piano sat untouched in the main room of the house, the cover still on the keys and the song she'd been practicing before she'd left sitting on its stand. He couldn't bare to rearrange anything to do with it, not without her there to tell him to keep his hands off of her piano with various levels of seriousness—she'd become incredibly protective of it over the previous months, and where he would have been okay with even cleaning it in the beginning of their marriage, he wouldn't dare to do it now unless she was present. There were many other things he could be working on without her supervision, but none of those felt like they'd be fulfilling to his heart in her absence.

Because of the giant difference in time zones between them for that week, calling her or trying to make any contact with her was next to impossible, but he would try every night before he'd go to bed, always getting saddled with a voicemail inbox that greeted him with her chipper voice. Hearing her tell him to leave his name and number and that she'd call him back was about as much of her voice as he was expecting to get to hear while she was gone, so he'd leave his message and tuck his phone away, going to sleep with the sweet memories of other things she'd said to him in recent memory playing on repeat in his mind. When morning came he'd have a voicemail of his own to listen to, always Kaede apologizing for missing his call and telling him about her day, finished off with an expression of love and a countdown to how long until she'd be home.

That message was what got him through the day, the routine starting over and him falling into the same steps once more. He loved his job at the detective agency, he really did, but having to pick solving the string of petty crimes over going across the world to watch his wife excelling in her own career was painful to him, especially at the specific point in their lives they were currently at. While he was working on organizing how the laundry list of crimes he'd been tasked with investigating fit together, he knew that Kaede was off having a lovely time touring around a foreign city, getting to spend several days there when she only had a commitment for one night, and the thought of her getting to see so many sights without him there with her bothered him. With how many people were in her personal entourage, it would have been completely realistic for there to be enough pictures for a large photo album of their time together, but instead whatever pictures that would be taken would just be tucked away for her own memories. It made his heart ache to know that he was missing out on so much in just a week, but work was more important for both of them at that point and they knew that the time was fast approaching where that wouldn't be a choice that was expected of them.

When he got home that night, later than usual much to his disappointment, the first thing Shuichi did was try to call Kaede, even though it was at an earlier time than he normally would. As expected he got sent to her voicemail, and the message that he left was different than the ones he'd been leaving previously; he asked her to call him back and not stop calling him until he answered, because he desperately needed to talk to her about things. There wasn't anything in specific he had in mind to discuss with her, but he did feel the absolute need to hear her voice in a way that wasn't a message left after a tone, and he couldn't even guarantee that it would happen.

The hours dragged on as he waited to see if Kaede would call him back, him giving a half-hearted attempt to get through his evening routine while taking every sound his phone made as if it was her making her call. That night seemed to be the first time in a long while where people were reaching out to him, and he got his hopes up several times only to find that the person contacting him was Kaito, or his supervisor, or Kaito again, or his uncle checking in on him, or Kaito a third time because he didn't get a response the first two. While he could appreciate that people were actually interested in how he was doing and making sure that he was taking care of himself, none of them were who he wanted right then, and he was going to have to resign himself to the fact that his wife was just too busy halfway around the world to call him back.

It was after he'd absentmindedly cleaned parts of the house and taken an hour-long shower, just as he was tucking into bed alone, that his phone came alive with the sound of the special ringtone Kaede had set for herself on it, a recording of her playing piano that always caught his attention. As fast as he could, so that he didn't miss a second of her time, he answered the call and pressed the phone to his ear, hearing her say, "Oh, wow, I wasn't expecting an answer from you so quickly! Aren't you supposed to be asleep right now?"

"Just about," he replied, feeling a warmth radiating through his body that found its start at the phone against his ear. "You caught me at a good time."

"That's great! I'm heading out to start getting ready for the show so I've got a little bit to talk to you, and when I heard your message I was like…I _have_ to call him. Something might have happened." That made him feel guilty about his method of getting her to contact him, but he was desperate and love made people do stupid things at times. "So, what's going on? Why do you need to talk to me?"

"Can I be honest with you?" he asked, hearing her laugh on the other side of the line. "I don't have anything I really need to say, I just missed hearing you talking to me. Things aren't the same without you around here."

She laughed again, and he could hear some voice on her side of things saying something to her, to which she covered the receiver and responded in a way he couldn't hear. When she returned, she almost completely avoided responding to what he'd said and was off on her own little tangent. "I'm sorry, I miss being home too, especially since if I were home, what I've been through today would not have been nearly as bad as it was!" Her huffy voice made his heart pang, especially since he didn't have a clue as to what she was referring to, and there was only one way to get an explanation for it, that being as her what was upsetting her. "I don't want to talk about it, you'll think it's funny like everyone else does."

"Try me," he told her, relaxing a bit into his spot in the bed. He was tired, sure, but as long as he was talking to the love of his life he could keep himself awake even if he was comfortable where he was laying. "I promise I won't laugh even a little."

She seemed to hesitate in responding, or it might have been a hiccup in their phone connection, but in the moments before she started to talk he realized he knew what the thing she was about to say pertained to, and he couldn't help but feel a little guilty for it. "I guess I can tell you then," she said with a dramatic sigh, and he knew that she was leaning back in whatever seat she was in, getting herself ready for what she was going to say. "So for the show tonight we've all got somewhat matching outfits, because they're gonna be sold for charity and I guess someone thought it would be cute if they were all close to matching, which is fine! I think my dress I've got to wear is super adorable!"

"Let me guess, you put it on and something happened to it," he suggested, not wanting to take too many stabs at what she was going to say but knowing that it definitely had something to do with exactly that. The low whine he heard her give was enough of an answer for him, and he followed with, "Well, if you're still going to the show, whatever happened wasn't too bad, right?"

"It wasn't bad because I told them this might happen when we first got the dress made, but can you imagine the look on everyone's faces when I couldn't get the zipper on the back to go up, like, at all? They were all laughing at me, Shuichi, and I felt horrible about it!" The sadness in her voice made him almost regret getting her to talk about what had happened, but he knew he'd hear about it sooner or later, so then was a perfect time. "We had to take it to get altered last-minute, but it was fine because like I said, I told the dressmakers this might happen so they had made the dress easy to alter for me."

Unsure of what he should say, because it sounded like she was most worried about him finding her predicament funny (which he didn't, he felt bad that she'd had to go through it), he merely replied with, "That's good that they did that for you."

"And they didn't laugh, unlike everyone else I know!" That last part was said louder, to the point that if she had continued speaking in that raised volume he would have been able to pull his phone away and still hear her clearly. He could hear snickering in the background, and she was huffing again when she started talking once more. "I'm so sorry that I'm so upset over this, but you know…it's just kind of one of those things that was going to happen, and everyone knew it. They've all known that I'm pregnant for a while now, they can just suck it up and be happy about it!" Once again she was raising her voice, and this time he did have to take the phone away from his ear so that he didn't go deaf at how loud she was.

From the moment she'd brought up something happening to her that would have gone over better if she were home, he knew that it had something to do with her current physical state, and how he and their friends would be much more accommodating to that sort of thing than the people she was abroad with. The concert that she was performing had been announced about six months prior, but her name hadn't been attached to it until nearly three months after that, and by that point they'd just begun telling their friends the news of their coming family expansion, which was conveniently kept away from the concert organizers' ears until it was too late to hide it any longer, which she'd hoped would take longer than it had. As excited as Kaede was to be having a child, she wasn't going to put aside her career for family until she absolutely had to, which was why she was determined to go through with the concert simply because she could—after all, her job was to sit at a piano bench and play music, there wasn't much else to it.

While he was thinking about things, Shuichi slowly was bringing the phone back to his ear, hearing that she'd gotten distracted from their conversation and was in the middle of a heated back-and-forth with one of the people she was with, which gave him time to keep thinking about other things. It was actually the fact that his dearest wife was pregnant that had made their forced separation during her trip insufferable, because he wanted to be there with her to watch her achieving grand things while growing another life within her, doing something half of the world's population couldn't dream of doing. He wouldn't say that he'd gotten protective of her over the past several months, but he did want to be another body around to keep her safe just in case something went wrong, and being trapped at home working at his own job made that impossible. There were few things he wouldn't do if it meant being able to drop everything to see her shining as a radiant beauty on stage that night, except giving up his career to support her in hers would have negative consequences on the life they led.

"Are you still there?" she asked, having finally remembered that she was on the phone with her husband, and he gave a small mumble to let her know that he was indeed still listening. "Okay, good! I might've started talking to the others, so sorry about that. I got kinda worked up about everything again and they were all telling me that I didn't need to do that because they weren't laughing at me or whatever. I know what I heard."

"They all knew about you giving your warning, didn't they? Isn't it possible that they were laughing about you being right?" he suggested, hoping that his outside perspective would be enough to change her mind, but this was strong-willed Kaede he was dealing with, there was not going to be any changing of anything. "I don't think that any of them would intentionally want to upset you, not when they know you're not exactly emotionally sound all the time."

She gave a small _hmph_, and without being able to see her he knew that she was puffing her cheeks out, giving herself the appearance of a small rodent with something stashed in its mouth, which he always thought was cute but she hated the comparison. "I can't believe you'd accuse me of being mood swing-y so openly like that, I thought you loved me!"

"Oh, trust me, I do love you," he assured her, before stifling a yawn with the back of his other hand. He may have enjoyed talking to her on the phone but the reality of his life was hitting him hard all at once and he could feel how exhausted he was from his day of work and waiting for her call. "I'm also very tired, remember how late it is here? I'm glad we got to talk, but—"

"Wait, before you go, I need you to remind me of something else!" She cut him off before he was even able to say that he was going to go to sleep, and her request was one that he wasn't sure he wanted to refuse. "When is it that we get to see the baby again? The day after I get home? Two days after?"

"—Kaede, I don't understand why you're asking me this right now, but it's the day after. You've had it circled on every calendar you own since you made the appointment, you should remember this." If he sounded exasperated it wasn't intentional, but the question made no sense to him and he was too tired to try and come at it with logic. "Is it okay if I go to bed now, so I'm not a zombie in the morning?"

She gave another whine, but didn't deny him what he wanted, even if she didn't explain why she'd asked what she had. "I guess it's okay, I don't wanna keep you up forever. You'll have enough sleepless nights and zombie mornings in the future, it'd be mean to make you start having those now. I love you, Shuichi!"

"Love you too," he replied, before tacking on an additional message where he could add a pet name without making it sound forced. "Have a good time at your concert, sweetheart." The last thing he heard from her before the call ended was her squealing at his use of the name, and that was enough to set his heart soaring as he put the phone aside and readied himself to fall asleep. Their call hadn't been long, and it certainly hadn't been very interesting in his opinion, but it reminded him of reasons why he loved her and made him long more for the day she came back.

It was just as he was about to drift off that his eyes shot back open, something having come to him in his mostly-asleep state that had him mentally smacking himself. She'd intentionally brought up when they'd get to see their child to make him think past wanting to see her again, he was sure of it, and that was one of the sneakiest things she could've done to his tired mind. But he would admit that it was well-played, and as he actually fell asleep he did so with a smile on his face, content with what had happened that night.

When his morning alarm began blaring, the first thing Shuichi instinctively did was roll over to see the peaceful face of the woman next to him, but he was quickly reminded that she wasn't home and that her side of the bed was untouched, as it had been for days. The fact that she'd been at her concert, the reason she'd been away, while he'd been asleep hit him within moments, and he was scrambling for his phone as he was waking up, wanting to see anything that Kaede might have sent him about her show and what she'd done in it. There weren't any voicemails like mornings before, because they'd been able to properly talk to each other, but there was a flurry of photos sent to him, and each one he saw made him smile as he looked at it. Any time he got to see Kaede was a blessing, but to see her all dolled up in the dress she'd needed to have altered that day (which he wouldn't have been able to tell had happened if she hadn't told him) made him feel things about her from head to toe, his love for her only multiplying every time he got to acknowledge that he was the one responsible for her physical changes.

Of course, the very changes he was speaking of weren't ones that most people would pick up on, not while she was on stage and wearing something that was meant to flatter her figure above anything else. Unless she or someone else that had been performing had announced her news, it was completely plausible that no one there in the crowd for that concert suspected a thing, and whenever that would become public knowledge (which would be soon, he figured) people would look back to the concert and ask how they hadn't been able to tell then. But he could tell, he was so familiar with how she looked on a daily basis that even when she was trying to mask her body he could still look at a picture and take note of her somewhat fuller appearance, which was especially noticeable in her chest in every single picture he'd received of the event.

That day Shuichi walked into work with a bit of a spring to his step, a happiness in his heart that had been absent in previous days. Everyone he interacted with that day noticed the change in his outlook, and whenever he was asked about it he would shrug it off and tell them they were imagining things. He wasn't going to start talking about Kaede and how much he loved and missed her and bring his spirits down on his own, he was going to revel in his love for her internally and get to work externally. There were only a few days left until she'd be home, anyway, and then he'd be back to normal in terms of routine, and that would be when he'd be able to talk to everyone about her and how he felt. It was difficult to mentally focus on the cases he was still working through, but he had no choice but to do it, as that was what he was being paid for.

Although, if he could get paid just for loving his wife, he'd gladly have taken that job without a second thought. He wasn't one for outward gestures of romance, but he would take money if it meant having to get better about them. On the other hand, Kaede was more than okay with being loud and proud about who she loved, and she was the one who had the job where she had the platform to express her love to thousands of fans at once. She would be better at making money for her love, but it would come more naturally to her than it would to him, so it would be more work if he was expected to bring home money for being cheesy and romantic at times. It wasn't like that was actually a possibility, though, and they'd have to stay on their current career paths for as long as they'd last, until new opportunities arose or until they gave up on their dreams for something else.

Those last days before Kaede came home were spent up on that cloud of happiness for Shuichi, and it was honestly the most productive he'd been on those cases since the initial investigations had started. He now had actual, tangible leads that he was running with, hoping that he'd soon be able to confidently say that he knew motives and reasons for certain things happening when, but his pride in the successes in his work paled in comparison to the excitement he was beginning to feel about seeing his wife again. When the day came for her to return, he went so far as to leave work early to get to meet her at the airport, stopping by the store on his way for some flowers and candy to greet her with. They were lovely flowers, bright pink of several varieties and tightly bound with a light purple bow, and he knew that the second she'd see them she'd forget any problems she'd had on her flight or on the last days of her trip and be happy to be home.

As it went, he was correct in that assumption for her reaction, but he wasn't expecting her to be approaching him with a surprise of her own. "Oh! Shuichi! You're here to see me!" she called the moment she saw him, stating the obvious but doing it in such a way that made it clear she was beyond tired from her trip. With one hand she was pulling her suitcase, which looked to be overstuffed but somehow still closed, and in the other she was carrying a book, it swinging with her every step. Once she got close enough, she took one glance at the flowers and screamed, bounding over to him as fast as she could with all of her luggage and offering him the book in exchange for the bouquet he'd brought. "I thought only I'd have a gift to give, but I guess I was wrong!" she laughed, not even seeing the candy that he'd slipped in underneath the ribbon. "I'm so lucky to have someone so thoughtful in my life!"

"I could say the same about you," he replied, looking at the book that she'd given him. It wasn't something he'd read before, that was for certain, but it had a title that immediately grabbed his interest, talking about unsolved murders from the region where Kaede had just been for the past week. "This looks amazing, thank you. I take it you enjoyed being there, so much that you want me to go solve their crimes?"

"Please, that totally isn't what I meant by giving you that! I just thought you would enjoy reading about murders and disappearances and mysteries from somewhere that's not here, and then maybe someday we could go there together and…you know, family vacation or something?" Even with the flowers she was now holding covering most of her face, he knew that she was looking down at her stomach, and he couldn't help but do the same. They were quiet for a moment, before she shook her head and said, "Or, like, maybe there could be another show there that I get to perform in, and we could go for that reason. I'm hoping they'll invite me back, even if I have to bring a baby with me next time."

A smile appeared on his face, one that he knew was going to be hard to get rid of now that he had his dearest wife back in his life. "I think they'd be stupid not to invite you back, you clearly had a great time and did exactly as you needed to, I'm sure they'll be able to look past a little person or two being dragged with you and—"

"Hold on, did you just suggest what I think you just suggested?" Letting go of her suitcase so she could use her now-free hand to waggle a finger at him, Kaede sounded like she was completely amused at what she'd heard. "I know my career won't suffer with one kid, but if you _think_ I'm going to be open to more than one right away you've got some real explaining to do, Shuichi!"

He took a step back, trying to avoid her finger as she brought it closer and closer to his face. "I didn't say anything had to be soon," he told her, hoping that flimsy defense would be enough to spare him from her potential rage in the future, because right in that moment she thought that what he'd suggested was genuinely funny. She was right, though, in that they needed to think hard about what further children would do to them in regards to the work lives they led, but one would definitely be manageable.

The whole way home, they talked about their week, what they'd done in the other's absence, what they'd accomplished with their jobs, and what they were looking forward to in the coming days. Their lives weren't going to stop just because they'd been reunited, there were still practices to be had, cases to be solved, and futures to be built, and they both knew that; looking to what was going to come next just reminded them both that they had so much to live for, not just each other, and until they met their child perhaps their careers would be the second-most important thing going for them.

* * *

**A/N: if this were my only foray into babyfic this whole week, I'd be pretty impressed, but alas you'll see more on a later day c:**

**anyway! thinking about the "career" prompt only brought back memories of _Secret Worth Keeping_ so I kind of tried to write something in a similar vein to that story!**


	4. The Boy from the Sky

For being the former site of a large battle that had incurred mass casualties on both sides, there was little in the way of marking the former battlefield as such, the only remnants of what once had happened there the occasional bloodied weapon still half-wedged in the ground. People were wandering the grounds, their eyes all turned downward towards the grass as they looked for something unknown to most of them, their only clue as to what they were looking for being that it wouldn't just be another weapon. Towards the middle of the field was a pair that were investigating together, a man wearing a thick, long coat and a woman in much lighter clothing with bells adorning the hem of her skirt and her sleeves, and while they were both acting like the others, one was much more focused on their task than the other was.

"It has to be around here somewhere," he lamented, crouching down to look closer at a patch of dirt surrounded by thick grass blowing in the light breeze. "I mean, they wouldn't have sent us all this way to not find any clues, do you think?"

"I don't know, Shuichi," the woman replied, looking around to see the various others doing their job around them. "Knowing how this country's being ran right now, it's just as likely that we've been sent to try and stop you from solving this crime as it is that they did send you here because the next clue is around."

He groaned, the possibility that they'd been duped into wandering into a diversion having crossed his mind a fair many times since they'd been stationed close to the battlefield. Being the second-best young tactical mind in the country had its major drawbacks, but Shuichi never really let them get him down too much, especially not when he was allowed to do his work without fighting. They'd been lucky that where they were given the tip to investigate was considered hallowed ground, and that the likelihood that they'd have to stop what they were doing to fight off brigands or thieves was very low. That had been something that had plagued their journeys before, especially when it came to trying to piece together the crime that he was currently attempting to solve.

Out in the distance, someone was calling his name, and when he heard it Shuichi stood up, grabbing the woman's hand and gently tugging for her to follow him towards the wildly-waving man he'd noticed. "Come with me, Kaede," he told her, as she nodded in acceptance of his request. "Maybe Kaito will have found something I'm looking for."

"You always think it will, and he never does." She spoke with a smile, her cheeks rosy as her face was framed with her long blonde hair, and just the sight of her being so joyful brought warmth to Shuichi's heart. She'd started out as a court musician for the ruling family, but she'd joined his investigation to bring light to the darkness that the process may have enveloped all of the participants with. In battle, she was able to fend for herself by way of thrown projectiles, but she was best suited for standing at Shuichi's side (or anyone's side, really, but she always made her way back to him), playing a soothing tune with the bells on her skirt to invigorate his soul.

On the other hand, Shuichi spent a fair amount of time being pulled from his investigations by needing to battle to protect himself, and even in a moment of assumed safety like the one they currently were in he had a magic tome and a blade stashed among his robes, ready for wielding at any moment. "You're right, but going to talk to Kaito usually ends well for us. Remember last time, he found that nest of baby ducklings? They were adorable, and a well-needed distraction from what we were doing."

She giggled, her head knocking side to side as she did. "Something tells me you're a lot more sour about that distraction than you'd like to admit," she teased, getting him to sputter and try to explain himself. "I thought they were cute, but I don't know how a brute like him could get away with being so close to those poor ducklings without hurting a single one."

Once he'd collected his thoughts, his mind having gotten scrambled in remembering what it had been they were being distracted from, Shuichi delivered his comeback. "He's not a brute, be nice about him. He's also clearly trying to get us to see whatever he's found, and that's more than we can say we were getting done where we were."

"You trying to defend him is always so funny, why don't you just admit you'd rather be with him than me and call it good?" Now Kaede was just being silly, as she knew very well why Shuichi was not interested in spending all of his time around Kaito (and it was only partially because she was part of the task force), but it was enough to get him to spend the rest of their short walk across the field having him ask her repeatedly if she really felt like he was going to ditch her like that. Playing into his anxieties about how he was perceived was somewhat rude, but she knew that he wasn't going to hold her doing that against her.

When they got to where Kaito was waving them down, they were immediately pointed in the direction of another spot further down the field, where what looked to be a dark mass was laying amongst the weeds and tall grasses. "I didn't think it'd be smart to go investigate whatever that is myself, y'know?" he said once he had their ears tuned to what he was going to say. "I figured, hey, my good ol' sidekick and his plus-one would be a good pair to ask to help me out. At least neither of you will kill whoever it is, if it really is a person and not just someone's bloody clothes."

"I hope it's not a person," Shuichi remarked, turning his head towards the cloudless sky, the heat of the day having been getting to him in his heavy robes since they'd come out to the field in the first place. "I don't think someone would be able to survive too long out here, especially not in something so dark."

"Well, just standing around talking about them isn't going to save them if they are a person," Kaede pointed out, taking the first step in the direction of the pile. "If you two want to see whatever it is for yourselves, you should come with me." They looked at each other for a brief moment before following in her footsteps, her leading them through the high grass until they were standing right beside the pile, which looked much smaller now that they were next to it.

As the head investigator of the group, Shuichi was the one to bend down and begin moving the fabric, trying to see what was underneath it. There was no person, much to his relief, and the clearly-ragged jacket was in such disrepair that he couldn't make heads or tails as to what affiliation its former owner may have had. However, on the ground under it was a relic half-buried in the dirt, much newer than any of the weapons that littered the former battlefield, and after conferring with the other two he made the decision to dislodge it from its resting place to see what it was. Grabbing the apparent hilt, he carefully tugged on it, and it popped out of the ground with ease, the broken end of the blade not as deeply buried as it would have been had it not been clearly shattered.

"That doesn't look usable," Kaito said, point out the most obvious aspect of the whole ordeal. "Looks like someone kicked the bucket and left their broken weapon here, but where's the body, if that's what happened?" He looked around the immediate vicinity, finding nothing as notable as the jacket in the grass had been, and shrugged. "Maybe there's some kind of bandits roaming around that looted everything that could be resold. Broken weapon? No money there. Kidneys? You could make a fortune."

"Are you rethinking correcting me about him being a brute?" Kaede whispered to Shuichi, who was standing up with the ragged jacket over his shoulder and the sword in his hand, and he stifled a laugh in response. Seeing him smile made her own face light up, and she continued in a louder voice, "I don't think that there ever was a body here, I think someone left this stuff here to mark their place and then ran off to tell someone else where they were. So maybe they were here trying to do what we're here trying to do?"

"No one else would be around trying to solve this mystery, unless they're undermining the better parts of the government by trying to meddle in this investigation." It was completely likely that someone was, in fact, trying to do that, especially with how corrupt the very government that ruled them was on a daily basis, but Shuichi tried to believe that people wouldn't get in the way of justice when it came to his particular crime he was trying to solve. The case wasn't just another murder, it was the complete disappearance of a person who had held the lofty title of head of the military of the state, and the person that Shuichi had been apprenticing under as a detective, revered as the top young tactical mind in the country, was certain that the leader dragging the country into chaos was the one behind the disappearance. But whereas she couldn't investigate for herself, she could send him to do it in her place, and that was how he'd gotten wrapped up in having his own task force and a mission to find any sort of information leading them to where the military leader could be.

Not that Shuichi would ask for anything to be different, he was grateful for the people that had been allowed to come into his life as a result of the investigation. Kaede and Kaito were two examples of that, but all of the members of the task force had meaning to him in some way, shape, or form, and if he wasn't particularly fond of them they had some kind of use that he couldn't look past. Between everyone he had several avenues for magic, a dedicated cleric, a thief who was great for tricking enemies into thinking he was one of them, a lion-man who claimed to be raised by wolves rather than other giant cats, and of course his musician girlfriend and his axe-wielding best friend. "Uh, Shuichi?" said best friend asked, reaching to grab his shoulder and give it a gentle shake. "Don't mean to break ya from whatever it is you're thinking about, but I think I might see some trouble out on the horizon. We might need to get out of here."

"Kaito's right, we can't start a fight on hallowed ground," Kaede added, her face contorting in disgust at having to agree with the purple-haired man towering over them both. "If we can get off this battlefield, then we can take care of fighting them, but we can't do it where we are, that's just wrong." Once again she took the lead, taking the path she'd originally forged to get to where the pile of belongings had been, but this time with a quicker pace. The two men followed her, occasionally looking back over their shoulders to see how close the approaching band of brigands was, but they were keeping a fast enough pace to stay ahead of them.

Leaving the marked boundaries of the battlefield was a struggle, as it required stealthily getting the attention of everyone else on the task force to gather them back together, followed by getting them all on the other side of the rock retaining wall that served as the edge of the sacred ground. Once the entire group was outside, they took up defensive positions, waiting for the coming army to follow them out so that they could take care of them with relative ease. It felt like a much longer wait than it actually was, due to the overhead sun beating down on them all, but soon the faces of dirtied soldiers were appearing on the other side of the wall, climbing over it to begin searching for the force. "I'll let them know we're still here," Kaito muttered, grabbing a bow off of his back and notching an arrow, letting it fly right into the chest of one of the soldiers, who fell to the blow.

That motion did exactly what he'd intended for it to do, their cover blown and all of the weapons being drawn to begin an attack. Shuichi looked at Kaede, who gave him a small, somewhat unamused smile before moving around him, going to give Kaito the encouragement he needed to fall another enemy before someone could potentially attack him. Without her at his side, Shuichi felt somewhat lonely, but he knew that he could counterattack no matter what, whereas Kaito would be relatively defenseless if he was holding his bow and faced with someone wielding any other sort of weapon. Shaking the strategy he'd concocted out of his head now that it had played out, he called out for several of the members of the task force to make their attacks while he fished out his trusty tome from inside his jacket, the pages well-worn but reliable. He could see the glint of metal as his allies were retrieving their own weapons, and when battle cries began being made, complete with people charging headfirst into battle (Kaito and his second wind included), that was when Shuichi flipped to the correct page in his tome and landed a strong spell right at an enemy's feet, singeing them and bringing them to their knees in agony.

He may have hated having to fight, but he was an expert at bringing people to a surrender, rather than killing them outright. From his vantage point, he could see his entire group of allies doing what they did best when it came to battles, exchanging blows when necessary to ensure that the enemies couldn't injure those who wouldn't be able to handle it. Kaede made her way back over to him, a set of shuriken in her hands, and she took a knee right next to where he was standing, the enemy's collective attention on those who were actively engaged in the battle. "I have no idea why he thinks it's best for him to start battles like that," she said, flinging one of her shuriken at an enemy whose back was turned to them, hitting them solidly in the back of the neck and sending them falling into the dirt. "We have stealthier people on the team, he could leave it to one of them."

"That's asking a lot of him, and of them," he replied, thinking about how there was one person in particular she was undoubtedly referring to, and how it took a lot to get said person to jump into battle right away. "I think Maki likes it better when we let her get involved at her own pace, rather than making her initiate combat."

"I know, but it would teach him some manners to see how someone else does it." Kaede looked like she had more to say, but the sound of rustling in the grass behind them made her jump, her whole body tensing up at the noise. Shuichi heard it as well, but he knew better than to let both of them turn their attention away from the heat of the battle—a costly mistake, as he heard her scream for him to duck as she grabbed his arm, trying to pull him down. It took a second for the call to register in his head, and when it did he could feel the rush of air behind him caused by something being swung in his direction, but an impact from a weapon never came.

Instead, what hit him from behind was an entire person, colliding into his back with their own, causing him to fall forward and lose grip of his tome. Kaede was still screaming his name, but she'd let go of his arm before he'd hit the ground and he didn't know what she was doing; in fact, all he knew was that there was someone on top of him, and that someone else had just tried attacking him while his guard was down. "What's going on?" he asked, narrowly avoiding getting dirt in his mouth as he spoke. "What just happened?"

"I…don't know," she replied, her voice tinged with panic. "But there's this kid, he looks like he's gotten hurt pretty bad…"

Her mentioning a kid surprised Shuichi, but there wasn't much he could do while pinned to the ground. "Call for Angie to get over here, she can patch him up, but could you maybe get whoever's on top of me off?"

"I'd love to, except that's the kid and I don't wanna move him. Let me just get Angie real quick, so we can get all of this taken care of." As he heard her walking away, the jingling of her bells the only way he could tell she was leaving, it occurred to him that he was absolutely unable to defend himself while he had this kid on his back, but if Kaede had felt comfortable enough to leave then the likelihood of another surprise attack must have been very low. By the time that she'd returned with their team healer, he'd heard the battle cries from several of their allies, as well as the loud roar coming from their lion shapeshifter teammate, and he felt confident that they'd all managed to wipe out the brigands without much in the way of his command.

They were lucky to have a somewhat competent cleric amidst their ranks, and Angie was able to get the kid to stir with a single use of one of her higher-level staves, her babbling something about how her god was blessing them on that day before she walked off to patch up others. "Okay, so, let me tell you what happened," Kaede said, as she carefully moved the now-dazed kid off of Shuichi's back so that he could stand and dust himself off. "I heard the grass behind us shake, I turned to see that there was a guy with a sword _right_ there, ready to attack you, I screamed, and then this kid literally fell from the sky, knocked the guy out with his feet, and then fell on top of you."

For the first time, Shuichi was able to see the person who'd been pinning him down, and whatever it was that he'd been expecting, it certainly wasn't what he'd got. When Kaede referred to them as a kid she was not joking, as he was barely looking to be a teenager, if even that old. His face was bruised, eyes clearly swollen and closed tightly, and he was wearing clothes littered with bloodstains. Wherever he'd come from, he had obviously been going through some rough things, and now he'd most definitely had things get worse as he'd fallen out of the sky into the middle of a battle. "He saved my life," he said as how small this boy was began really impacting him, "and we don't know a thing about him. Let's take him back to camp with us and see if he has any explanation for who he is and why he's here, I know that's probably dangerous but…he saved my life."

"He did, and he may need all the help he can get," she replied, brushing some of the boy's dark hair off of his forehead to expose a scattering of scrapes and more bruises. "He's survived something that we might need to know about."

"That's true, but…" Shuichi trailed off as he didn't know what it was he wanted to say. She was right that he may know something they needed, but it was just as likely that he was dropped onto their battle by pure coincidence, and that he was working for the government or even for opposing investigators, and that taking him in and helping him recover would be aiding the enemy.

The fact that he was just a kid was the sealing factor in their decision to keep him around, and that choosing to do that was a decision that neither of them would soon regret.

* * *

After getting the boy back to their base camp, they gave him his own tent and allowed him to heal on his own time, with the supervision of at least one member of the task force at all times. It was after a few days that he first spoke, clearing his throat while Shuichi was sitting nearby, working on writing his report regarding what he'd found out on the sacred battlefield. He looked up to see the boy's eyes wide open, his hand feeling his forehead and the various scrapes and bruises that still covered his head. "I'm not a bad person," he said, causing Shuichi to set his pen down in between the pages and closing his report book. "I mean, you're going to think that I am, but I'm really not. I don't remember my name, I just remember that I was with my friend and we went through a door and—"

"You can go ahead and stop right there. I know you're trying but that's not something I can believe at face value," Shuichi replied, the boy grumbling something in response that he didn't care to listen to. This was a man that worked solely on rational thought and facts, or at least tried his hardest to, and hearing some strange boy tell him that he wasn't bad was not something he could rationally accept. "As far as I know, you're an enemy of some sort sent to make my investigation harder, and you came into our lives by falling out of the sky and landing on me. There's nothing there that tells me that you are a good person."

The boy pursed his lips together, closing his eyes and showing off his still-swollen and bruised eyelids, something that Shuichi could notice even in the somewhat dimmed light inside the tent. "Trust me, I know there's no reason you should believe a word I say, but it would be smart if you did it anyway."

"Sassy, aren't we?" The fact that a kid was telling him what would be smart to do was somewhat humorous to Shuichi, but he couldn't bring himself to laugh and let that guard down around him. If he really was an enemy, he could take any kind of momentary weakness as a chance to make an attempt on his life. "Give me one good reason why I should believe you and perhaps I will consider it."

One eye cracking open, the boy put a finger to his chin before replying, "I'd love to give you one, but I'm only going to say it once and I'd like everyone to hear me say it. It's a big request I'm sure, but if you want to know what I remember about where I came from, you'll fill it quickly."

"Now you're just getting bossy."

"But you're going to do it, aren't you? Everyone, or nothing at all." That was the last thing the boy said before he rolled over, facing away from Shuichi and giving a little groan in pain at how his weight was distributed while he was on his side. The tactician raised his eyebrows at the boy but stood up anyway, making sure he had his report book, the tattered robe, and the broken sword with him, just in case any of that was what had drawn the boy to their task force in the first place. While Shuichi didn't actually believe that the robe or the sword were relevant to the mystery he'd been trying to solve, he couldn't risk them being the keys to solving the crime and letting them out of his sight.

He left the boy's tent and headed for where he figured others would have been gathered, just to start getting everyone together in one whole group. As luck would have it, Kaede saw him approaching and began waving him towards her and the gaggle of ladies she had sitting with her, him seeing that it wasn't just her but rather her, Angie, the mage Himiko, the brawler Tenko, and the assassin Maki all sitting in a circle, several weapons between them and the other ladies all still talking. By the time he got to them they'd fallen silent, everyone's eyes on him as Kaede stood to greet him with a soft kiss on the cheek. "I thought you were supposed to be watching the kid," she said, her head tilting to the side as Shuichi began blushing from her form of affection. "Did something happen? Do you need our healer to go in and help him?"

"No, that's not it at all," he replied, shaking his head and trying not to think too much about what the kid could be getting up to now that he had the tent to himself for the first time since he'd been taken in. "Actually, what I need is for everyone to group up for a moment, the kid woke up and requested that he be able to talk to everyone to explain a thing or two about what's going on, I guess? He was kind of rude about it, he wouldn't tell me a thing with me by myself."

"Then we know what to do, I think." Turning to face her friends, Kaede put her hands on her hips and leaned towards them, a grin appearing on her face. "Ladies, go find anyone you can and bring them back here so we can see what that kid's got to say! I'm excited to hear it, I bet certain others would be too!"

Three of the four got up and left at once, but the one remaining was staring at Kaede with a stern expression. "You're only pushing this job off on us because you want to get to spend the time with your lover," Maki bluntly stated, slowly getting to her feet to help out. "Don't you get enough time together while you're sharing your tent?"

"Oh just go already!" Waving her friend off, Kaede waited until Maki had walked away before she turned back to Shuichi, rolling her eyes and huffing once they were standing face-to-face again. "I'm so sorry about her, you know that she's against seeing all that cute romance stuff because she's too scared to admit to her own crush. She doesn't mean a word of what she says, and she's totally wrong because I'm going to help too!" To demonstrate, she sat right back down where she'd originally been sitting, kicking her feet up into the seat that Maki had just been using. "I'll hold down the fort, you go get the kid, and hopefully when you get back they'll all be here."

"That might be wishful thinking, Kaede," he said, unsure of how cooperative the kid would be upon returning to the tent, "but I'll trust you on this. Make sure everyone gets here so that we can get through this without too many problems once that kid joins us." She nodded in understanding of the task she'd been given and he headed back towards the tent where he'd been writing his report, taking a side detour to drop off his report and belongings on his side of his and Kaede's shared sleeping quarters before he made it to the opening on the small tent. As he poked his head inside, he could see that the boy was laying face-down, his arms outstretched and the jacket he was wearing curled up under itself on his back. He didn't want to disturb the kid if he'd fallen back asleep but he also didn't want to hold everyone up when they got gathered, especially since he knew some of them were out training during their down time.

"I can hear that you're in here, you know," the kid grumbled, rolling over so that he could sit up and face Shuichi without being asked to do so. "I'm guessing you did as I wanted and got everyone together, and you want me to join you now?"

"Something like that, sure." The way that this kid was talking to him was rubbing Shuichi the wrong way, but there wasn't much he could do about it unless he wanted to risk the kid becoming uncooperative and ruining any chances of getting answers from him. "I really didn't do much, someone else on the force took control and sent people out to find everyone else. Not like you care about the specifics."

The boy's face contorted, and Shuichi couldn't tell if it was in pain or if it was because he felt insulted. "I do care about the specifics, I just can't tell you why that is. My heart's telling me that something about the other people here matters to me, but my mind doesn't have any idea why that is."

"Might be something to do with the forgotten identity thing," Shuichi suggested, thinking about how the government could have taken some forbidden half-sibling or relative that any of his task force members may have had and turned them into this child sitting there with no recollection of who he was. "Not like that matters right now, we care more about what you do know, not what you don't."

"Uh, thanks for that," the boy replied, his face relaxing once more as he brought a hand back to his forehead, letting it slide down over his eyes. "I do wish that these injuries were completely healed before we had to do this, but the important stuff is about what I say, not how I look." He hesitated for a moment, before getting to his feet, staggering towards Shuichi for a couple steps before he was grabbed, held tightly in place by the man at the tent's entrance. "Hey, what gives? I'm not going anywhere you don't want me going, I'm a good guy, remember?"

"Until we know that for certain I can't take any chances, and besides, it's not like you shouldn't be used to being walked around like this." Normally it wasn't Shuichi who was in charge of moving the kid from place to place, but he had no idea where his usual go-to people for the task were (Kaito was getting retrieved by Maki, he was sure, but he really had no idea where lion man Gonta was going to be found), so it was a bit strange how much force he was having to use to hold the kid in place. He wanted to seem friendly though, so he quickly added on, "We aren't going far. Think of this as us going somewhere as close friends, okay? I mean no harm to you, just like you mean no harm to me."

The boy seemed to be tense with Shuichi's hands on him, but he didn't resist being led out to where Kaede was still sitting, no one else having returned yet. "That took you a lot less time than you thought it would, huh?" she asked, while he positioned the boy in such a way that he'd be able to easily address everyone once they arrived. He gave her a small noise of agreement and she laughed, standing up to approach the boy for herself. "Well, it's going to be kind of weird if you're here telling us all these things about yourself or whatever you want us all here for, and none of us even know your name. So, proper introductions, my name's Kaede Akamatsu and I'm the musician for the task force, what's your name?"

"I don't remember." He spoke quietly, his eyes looking down towards his bloodied and scuffed shoes rather than at the woman talking to him, and Shuichi had to be the one to look at Kaede and tell her that he'd heard the boy say that already to him. "I said it because it's the truth! You're treating me like a criminal when I've done nothing wrong!"

"Oh, please don't cry, you sound so upset right now…" Squishing her lips together as she thought about what to do, Kaede's course of action was to hug the boy, getting him to perk up and look at her as she wrapped her arms around him tightly. During the gesture several people joined them there in the center of the camp, and by the time she'd broken away from him, he was blinking back tears, she was smiling sweetly towards him, and every other member of their group was there under the impression that they were going to find things out about the boy who fell from the sky.

Whatever it was that they were expecting, what he finally said to them once he mellowed out a bit from his burst of emotion, his face going neutral and his eyes focusing on anywhere but the people he was talking to, was nothing they could have expected. "To start, let me say that I have no recollection of my name and who I am, but I do know that the last thing I remember is following my friend through a portal through space and time that had opened at our feet. I…what day is it?"

The absurd initial statement followed by the question came off as strange, but after he was given the information he requested he put on a sour expression, his eyes shifting over to looking straight at Shuichi. "This is where I know I can prove I know what I'm talking about. You, you're the detective investigating the disappearance of one commander Ikusaba from the military, am I correct?" As this was not information anyone had mentioned to the boy—nor was it information that was readily available to the public—Shuichi seemed surprised to hear that be said to him, but he nodded anyway. "In the _future_ I hail from, today is exactly one week before the date of your death, at the hands of the people who caused her disappearance, and therefore one week before the country falls into complete and utter chaos because of the government's corruption."

"Did he just say he's from the future?" Kaito loudly asked, surprised as everyone to hear that specific word be used. "Like, that's not actually possible, is it? People don't just start time-traveling whenever they want!"

Several others had questions about the plausibility of what they'd heard, but none were quite as confused about the specifics as Shuichi was. If it were true, which it most likely wasn't because of what Kaito had said, then he had just heard the date of his apparent death, and that gave an unsettling feeling to him in the pit of his stomach. "Okay, let's pretend that the kid is right and he is from the future. Is there anything else that would prove your word, or are you just expecting us to believe that you're telling the truth when you're speaking such wild nonsense?"

"I do have one thing," the boy said, opening the mage robes he was wearing and pulling out a tome that was tucked deep in one of its pockets. The pale cover of the book was unfamiliar to both of the magic users in the task force, not a standard type of magic by any means, and the boy held it up for everyone to get to see. "This is called the Tome of Hope, which came into my possession after my mother sent me to avenge my father's death. Its twin is the Tome of Despair, which my friend has in her possession. I have no idea where she is, nor do I know why we were given these books in specific, but I do know that they have a connection to the disappearance of General Ikusaba, as well as the murder of one Shuichi Saihara."

"Those tomes don't actually exist," Shuichi mumbled to himself, trying to ignore that he'd just had his full name delivered to the group without him ever once mentioning it to the boy. He was thinking about how he'd been told again and again that the Tomes of Hope and Despair were relics that the ruling party were meant to guard while in power, but the current government had lost track of them and they were missing with zero indication of where they were. Holding out his hand, he asked if he could see it for himself, but the boy shook his head. "Why won't you let me see it? If it's connected to my death that is apparently happening next week, wouldn't it be wise to share the information within it?"

"No, because the tome itself will do nothing to save your life. What has to happen is unrelated to the tomes, but rather to the other piece of the investigation you haven't gotten to yet, if you're hanging around this area." The boy closed his eyes, bringing his tome in closer to his chest, before he let his eyelids snap back open, his gaze falling across the entire group. "Your task force will face an ambush here tonight that will weaken you for next week's showdown, it would be best if we headed back towards the capital now to save that energy and perhaps change the course of the future."'

"Are we really going to trust this snot-nosed brat?" Tenko's voice rang out from the middle of the crowd, her disdain at the speaker being a male all-too-apparent. "I'm not packing up all of camp to avoid a battle we don't even know is actually going to happen."

Angie gave a high-pitched hum, gently placing her hand on Tenko's shoulder and pushing her from side to side. "Atua says that it would be wise to listen to the child, he is a messenger from other gods working alongside him to right the wrongs of a horrible fate," she said, her voice taking on a preaching tone that she usually saved for delivering her off-base predictions. "I am for heading back to the capital!"

Rumblings among the crowd broke out, each stating their stance on what to do. Most were in favor of trusting the kid and returning home, but there were some like Tenko who were not quite down to believe his word so easily. "I'm sorry, but you can't travel through time and you certainly can't know an ambush is coming beforehand," Maki snapped, bringing her hands to rest on the top of the crossbow she had resting in her lap, her having brought out the weapon at some point before she'd returned to the camp with Kaito. "I'd rather stay here and die than go back."

"Whoa there, Maki Roll, don't be so harsh about things. You wouldn't die, the kid said that only Shuichi's going to die and that's not even today." Kaito made his correction with a laugh, which was met with her giving him an icy cold glare, something that he shrugged off. "Let's just trust the kid, there's nothing wrong with doing that, I don't think."

"There's a lot wrong with it," she coldly replied, "and I'm not going to fall for it."

His eyes widening at the discussions he'd created within the group, the boy turned to Kaede, who was smiling at him as if she was going to believe exactly what he had said from the start. "I have a favor to ask of you," he said to her, catching her by surprise at the kindness with which he spoke. "I know that not everyone believes me, but if you and…Shuichi tell everyone to listen to me, I know they'll do it."

"That's sweet that you think we have that kind of power, but we really don't. Shuichi's only got the power over everyone when it comes to investigation things, and going back to the capital to avoid conflict isn't exactly what his leadership is for. But…we can try, I guess!" Her positivity was exactly what the boy had been hoping for, a trait of hers that he must have gathered from their quick introduction before everyone had gathered, and soon she was giving an impassioned explanation for why they should put aside all their worries and trust the kid, just for the one event.

Once he saw that the love of his life was so passionate about listening to the boy, Shuichi made it a point to decide to give it a shot, and between the two of them they were able to convince everyone to some extent. Over the following hours the camp was completely torn down and packed away, the stronger members of the force doing the heavy lifting (although that meant that most of their belongings were being toted around by Gonta and his impossibly strong arms, rendering him unable to transform into his lion form but they weren't planning on getting into any fights), and before nightfall they were on the road, ready to camp out in basic tents over the following nights before they got back to the capital.

On the second morning after their decision to leave, a weary band of rogues caught up with them, and the well-rested force was able to take them out with relative ease. It was during that battle, with the strange boy from the future at his side, that Shuichi noticed that the boy had a similar stance to his own when casting magic, them both flinging spells while further back from the action and a lack of confidence in their movements despite their skill. He mentally wrote it off as a product of the boy having grown up hearing about him, clearly caring enough to want to come to the past to change the fact that he was supposed to die.

This was not just something that he noticed, though, as was discussed that night while curling up to go to sleep in their shared tent. "I felt a lot like I was fighting next to you when I was fighting next to that boy," Kaede admitted as she brushed through her hair with her fingers, having changed into her nightclothes and was sitting and waiting for Shuichi to finish writing something in his report book. "It's kind of weird, but he knew what he's doing so that's cool. I wonder if his parents talked a lot about you when he was little and he thought he should grow up to be like you?"

"That's my thinking, if we're being honest," he replied, in the middle of writing about some of the quirks he'd noticed about the boy while they'd been in that battle together. "I'll see if I can find the time to ask him about that while we march tomorrow, if he remembers anything about his parents perhaps he'd tell me."

"What a good plan." Yawning, Kaede stopped fiddling with her hair and instead closed Shuichi's book on him while he was still writing, a light having begun shining in her eyes out of nowhere. "Now let's unwind a bit before we go to sleep, work out some of the stresses from out on the battlefield, have a good time since we're still alive and apparently that's not supposed to stay true for much longer."

When morning came they'd barely slept and were somewhat drowsy for the day's travel, but the pair was not going to complain about what they'd done to pass the time aside from sleeping. Even with his muddled mind, Shuichi remembered what he'd said he would ask the boy about that day, and when he got the chance to do it he took the opportunity, only to be met with an explanation that he wasn't expecting: "I never met my father, he died before I was born, and my mother spent my childhood talking to me about all of the strong men and women that died senselessly just like him."

"So you can tell me that, but not your name?"

The boy blinked a couple times, before shrugging. "I guess I can, yeah. I can't tell you why I learned so much about you growing up, but your death really shook the whole country when it happened because of what you were trying to stop from happening. I…kind of hoped that when I found out I knocked someone out who was trying to kill you, I'd dropped into the past at the time you were supposed to die, but I've still got the chance to stop your murder."

Something about that clicked in Shuichi's mind in a way he wasn't sure he was supposed to connect it, but he decided not to comment on that particular thing. "Well, I don't intend on dying until I've solved the general's disappearance, so thank you for being here to let me know how and when my death is supposed to happen."

"You're welcome, uh…" The boy froze, his feet stopping with his legs spread for a stride, and he looked at Shuichi for a moment before bolting off ahead, catching up with the rest of the group and leaving the man he'd been speaking with behind. It was strange, but if what Shuichi had just realized was true, it made complete sense for that sort of behavior to have finally begun rearing its head.

It was going to be a long few days until the supposed date of his death in another timeline.

* * *

When they got back to the capital, things seemed to be relatively normal for them, but by the time that they'd checked in with the people in charge of the investigation, it was clear that nothing was quite as peaceful as it seemed. For starters, when Shuichi asked about where his superior investigator was, he was told that she had been met with a strange visitor who had led her off out of the city, and in her absence he wasn't allowed to leave once again. The strangeness of that situation was only added to when, after the task force had gotten back to their own headquarters right outside the city's walls, there was evidence of strangers having been around the place.

The final straw in how odd things were came when they determined that their building was safe and entered it, to find a small manakete boy sitting inside the meeting area, completely unaware of who the people who were entering were but also scared to leave them. He introduced himself as Kiibo, dropped off by his much-older father who didn't have the time to keep an eye on the young dragon, and after they collectively decided that he was safe (they even included the opinion of their local future-dweller, who said that he recalled Kiibo being around as a member of the task force in his childhood) they tried integrating him into their ranks immediately.

This became a mistake as, when the fated day of the apparent murder rolled around, the dragon was still completely inexperienced in battle and needed to be under constant protection from his stronger allies. It happened to be a miracle that, when the soldiers sent by the government burst through the doors and windows of the building with the intention of killing the investigator present, the force had been being visited by several other allies who spent their time in the city as opposed to traveling to investigate crime scenes—and so the mechanist Miu and the trickster Kokichi were left to guard the manakete while everyone else did what they did best and took on everyone with their normal partner.

The only exception to this was that the boy from the future was once again battling with Shuichi, claiming that he was going to be watching his back to keep him completely safe, and Kaede was right there with both of them, her heart telling her that she needed to be there just in case things went awry and this was the last time she got to be with her soulmate. For the most part, things seemed like they were just a normal battle, albeit against stronger enemies than they were used to having to fight, but the fact that they'd been told this was meant to be someone's death scene weighed heavily on everyone's minds, and it was clear that all participants in the battle were keeping an eye on the trio to make sure that they weren't going to lose Shuichi at any point.

Just when it seemed like all of their concern was for naught, the boy pointed out, "There she is! There's the woman who's going to kill you!" as he grabbed Shuichi's shoulder and turned him to face a remarkably familiar face that he knew he'd seen before. It wasn't just Shuichi who started looking at the woman, and Kaede recognized her just as quickly, a face that they'd both seen time and time again when researching the disappearance that their task force was investigating.

Of all the points to leave out, the fact that the disappeared general was the one who was to kill him was a mighty big one, but before Shuichi could remark on it she was lunging towards him, ready to take care of business and put an end to everything. He started flinging magic in her direction, in time with Kaede's shurikens that were barely making a dent in her defenses, and she came at them both with a raised blade, ready to hack and slash her way through anyone who stood between her and the complete corruption of the government.

If there was one thing that general Ikusaba wasn't expecting, it was a boy from the future being present, and a single blow from the Tome of Hope had her falling backwards, the illusion that the woman posing as the general had set up with the Tome of Despair breaking with the spell from its twin book making contact. She wasn't actually the missing general, she was someone who'd pretended to be her to bring around a breakdown of society, using magic that was not supposed to exist outside of government protection, and while that wasn't going to solve the actual mystery of Ikusaba's disappearance, it was going to keep everyone from believing she'd been a turncoat all along.

The woman posing as her was begging for mercy as Shuichi switched his tome for his blade, wanting to do what he felt necessary and take the life of the person who had been hellbent on taking his. What he didn't expect was for her to be able to get back to her feet after all of the attacks she'd endured, raising her blade to him as he did the same to her. She was quicker than he was, much lighter on her feet, and it was obvious that Shuichi wasn't fond of such close combat as he made sloppy swings and couldn't land any hits on the woman, whereas she was nicking his arms and legs every chance she got, getting dangerously close to making a deadly blow several times.

Her opening came when she managed to disarm him, his sword bouncing across the floor of the headquarters with several clacks. He looked sheepishly at her as he could see arrows flying in her direction, the team's bow users having turned their attention to the fight, and he could hear Himiko somewhere giving an incantation for one of her spells, but all of those attempts to protect him paled in comparison to the one that came in the split-second before she swung her sword right at his defenseless neck. The magic was bright, light, and powerful, and came with a loud bellow courtesy of the future boy, "Not my father, not today, you spiteful bitch!"

As she fell from the direct headshot she received from the spell, Shuichi found himself raising a hand towards his neck to make sure he hadn't actually been slashed at, stunned at what had just happened. While he may have been speechless, Kaede wasn't at all, and she'd heard exactly what her boyfriend had heard. "Did you just call him your _father_?" she asked, looking at the boy with her jaw beginning to hang. "Like, as a serious thing?"

"I…shouldn't have said it, but yes," he replied, tucking his tome into his robes where he always carried it. "Look, if you're going to be upset about that, please at least—" He was cut off due to having the breath knocked out of him, Kaede charging towards him and wrapping him in a much tighter hug than the first one she'd given him. She was still hugging him when Shuichi finally collected himself and came to see what they were doing, his focus entirely on the boy as he was looking for answers to the same question that Kaede had already asked.

It was during the cleaning process of the battle's aftermath, after they'd reported things to the proper authorities and let the public know what was happening in regards to the investigation and to the government's shady behavior, that they were given the answers they needed. Of course, before those answers were delivered, there was one thing that had to be said in regards to them, and Shuichi was more than happy to be the one to say it. "You revealed your identity to me long before you said it there, you just didn't realize it," he said, getting the boy to start stuttering and hanging his head in shame of what he'd done. "No, no, you didn't do anything wrong, except expect a detective such as myself to not notice small details in what you were saying."

"I knew that you would probably start suspecting something once you started making me talk about my family, but I didn't think you'd connect that my dead father was the one I came back to save." His head still hanging, the boy couldn't bring himself to look at either of his sort-of parents, until a hand cupped his chin and tilted his head back up, Kaede being the one to do the act, which made him choose to avert his eyes instead. "I messed up not being honest with you from the start, but I didn't think I could do it. It hurt to have to lie to you both, I wanted you to get to know who I was since…you know…"

"When's your birthday?" Kaede asked, completely disregarding what he was saying to get her question out there. "Ooh, better yet, what's your name? I've just got to known what I named my precious child in the future!"

"Oh, uh, my name is Shikou." It was only the second of the questions that he answered, and that fact was not lost on Shuichi, who had been curious about both parts as well ever since he'd started suspecting that this kid was back in the past to save him for more than a potential idolization reason. His name was important, certainly, but there was something about the timeline he presented that was most curious, and he needed to address that sooner or later.

For the moment, just knowing that the boy's name was Shikou, and that he had managed to save his somewhat father's life on two different occasions in two vastly different ways, was enough to tide him over. But when the time came just a few weeks later to learn that he'd avoided the birthday question because that was going to be a _lot_ closer than they'd been expecting, that decision to blindly trust the boy felt all the wiser. It wasn't to say that their lives were perfect at that point, as there was still a mysterious disappearance to solve and a country to save from further despair at the hands of a corrupt government; but that wasn't to say that steps in the right direction weren't being made, and they could only hope that the world that the current timeline's version of the boy would be born into would be much, much better than the one that his future self had lived through.

At least the baby version would be allowed to have his father there in his life, and that was honestly the biggest thing that future Shikou had wanted to see happen.

* * *

**A/N: I can't help it, when I think "fantasy" I think about Fire Emblem lol**

**also I shamelessly borrowed one of my fankids for this oops**


	5. Bright Lights

For the most part, the world was dark. Sure, there were lots of bright, flashing lights here and there that littered everyone's vision, and the prevalence of technology meant a lot of illuminated screens that commanded attention, but everyone was isolated and alone despite everything going on around them. Things were dark, grim, and completely contrasted from the lights that flickered both in the fore and backgrounds of existence, but no one ever questioned what was happening in their world. As far as the common people were concerned, the technological aspect to their world was completely normal, and they'd grown to adapt to the things going on in their face.

There were some people who hadn't gotten used to the darkness of the world, and one of those people was the apprentice detective Shuichi Saihara, who could vividly remember the time before the darkness had come and wished to go back to it. He hadn't had the best experiences in that previous life, his behavior constantly withdrawn and isolated on his own terms, but now that the way he'd previously lived was the relative norm, he wished that he could take things back and make them right. His goal was to search and find a way to reverse the technological apocalypse that had befallen the world, but as an apprentice there was little he could do on his own.

His days were spent under the bright lights in that dim world, the cybernetic enhancements of the people around him (which tended to be limbs for effortless movement, but the new fad involved modifying one's eyes to become blind to things happening on all sides) distracting him from what he was trying to get done. Crime was rampant in the technologically-advanced world and he always had something to investigate, whether it was a theft, a murder, or most often, a stolen identity. He would walk into someone's house and find graphic images of both blood and pornographic nature being blasted over their walls, and somehow he would be the one to blame for him seeing such things. Turning a blind eye to what was going on would make him no better than the people feeding into the despair and darkness of the world, and so he swore to himself he'd stay vigilant. He wouldn't let himself slip into the grasp of the technology. He'd been a detective in the world before it had become prevalent, he could stay one in the post-world.

That was his plan, at any rate, but all it took was one little video to pass by his eyes one afternoon to change his outlook on things. The video contained a girl, who couldn't have been any older than he was, playing a digitalized piano to perfection, her fingers flying across the keys at an unhuman rate. He was awestruck by the music that she produced, but when he tried properly watching her she was gone, her video having disappeared into the coming wave of dystopian propaganda meant to coerce him into falling into everyone else's despair. If it were safe, or made sense to do so, he would have gone inside the shop that had been playing the video on their storefront screens to ask them who the girl was, but as a detective he was quite literally the scum of the earth in society's eyes. He was cleaning up everyone else's messes, fighting against the control of technology in everything that happened, and because of that he was seen as lesser than just about anyone, and so bringing attention to himself where it wasn't needed was too dangerous. The last thing he needed was to be shot dead by someone's hand-laser simply because they thought he was there to cause mischief, even though his life's work was to correct wrongdoings.

Whatever it was that the world had turned into, he wasn't a fan of it and what it had done to his life, and he longed for things to go back to normal, when the days were naturally bright and he was the lone dim spot in most people's lives. To say that he was trying to be a beacon of hope for himself and the others around him wouldn't be quite correct, but Shuichi wanted to rally against the cyberpunk society and bring things back to normal before it was too late and everything was lost. He spent that day like every day before it, solving whatever crimes he could without endangering himself, with little to no recognition or thanks from anyone he helped (as everyone was too wrapped up in other things to even notice him), before he snuck back to his home, dodging streets full of surveillance cameras in favor of back roads that he knew were safe.

He lived in an apartment leased out to his uncle, who was also a detective but was one working to solve crimes against the digital revolution—putting him at odds with the very nephew he was giving a place to live. Shuichi knew that if his uncle found out what he was doing with his life he'd be out on the streets, if not persecuted for his supposed crimes, but he was trying his best to keep that aspect of things secret. For as long as he'd been slipping under the radar he hadn't once come close to getting caught, but he knew he'd only be able to keep up appearances for so long before something fell apart.

Little did he know that the something he was dreading related back to the video from earlier in the day, because as he was using the facial recognition on his door to let himself in, the sweet sound of that girl's piano music filled the air and he jolted upright, breaking his concentration and barring entrance into the apartment for himself for a moment. He recognized her tune immediately, and he looked around to see where it was that it was playing from, but he couldn't see anyone else but himself and all other apartments were closed up tightly. Shaking his head, he tried to ignore the music and get into his home, but when he opened the door the song only grew louder, and to keep anyone else from growing suspicious about it he ran inside and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Oh, I wasn't expecting any guests," a female voice said, making Shuichi scream at the sound, and scream louder when he saw that the speaker was sitting on his couch, her digitalized piano in front of her and her fingers steepled underneath her chin. "What brings you here today, I didn't know you were coming."

"I…this is…why are you talking to me like this isn't my home?" Shuichi was beyond confused and startled at how someone else, especially the girl he'd seen that video of, had gotten into his apartment when he was the only one who could unlock the door without him being told it was opened. "Who are you and why are _you_ here?"

She didn't answer immediately, looking around at her surroundings and the surprised dark-haired boy she was sharing space with, only to stand up and brush her keyboard into thin air with her gloved hands. "I didn't realize I was somewhere I didn't belong, I'm sorry," she replied, her cheerful face darkening slightly. "Can you forgive me? I guess I have no idea where I am, if I'm not home."

"That doesn't tell me who you are, though, or how you got in, or…" There were a million questions running through Shuichi's mind at the absurdity of walking into his apartment to find the piano girl from the advertisement he'd seen sitting in his living space. "Tell me how you got here, that's what's most important."

"I don't know."

"And that's what I thought you'd say." With shaking hands, he reached into his pocket to grab his phone, to call his uncle to tell him there'd been an intrusion into his apartment, but the girl moved quickly to stop him, her gloved hand grabbing his wrist before he'd gotten to his phone. "Let go of me, I'm not calling any sort of authority. Do you really think we can trust them in this world?"

"I don't know," she repeated, her grip slowly loosening as she looked him straight in the eyes, him noticing that despite her expression being bright there was dimness in the back of her stare. "You asked for my name, though, and that part's easy. Kaede Akamatsu, concert pianist and current face of a lit-up revolution."

That wasn't the first time that Shuichi had heard of the concept of a lit-up revolution, but it was the first time he'd heard someone openly talking about it. Those were the kinds of ideas that got people murdered to express, with the downfall of normal society having stripped most people from the desire to go back to what had been oppressing them before. Life seemed better when everyone's attention was turned away from struggles and was focused entirely on digital media, and it was only the few who didn't agree with that concept that were tossing around the idea of a revolution to go back. Even though his morals and ideas aligned with the idea, Shuichi refused to side with it, wanting to solve things his own way and stay out of the crosshairs of what being attached to the project might do to him. "I thank you for your honesty, Kaede," he said, backing up towards his door and opening it, gesturing to the now-open doorway with a rushed motion, "but you need to leave. Now."

"But everyone loves a concert pianist in their lives, especially one as talented as me," she replied, her words forced out with a smile and a tilt of her head. "You should let me stay here, so I can talk to you about—"

"No, don't say it! Out, now!" The thought of everything in his life falling apart because of some strange happening where a digital icon appeared in his apartment was horrifying to Shuichi, but he knew that Kaede was there to talk about things that could and would get them both killed if they were overheard. It hurt him to have to chase her out like that, when she didn't even know how she'd arrived in the first place, but it was what had to be done and he was set in stone on that decision. The moment she left, coldly silent upon exiting, he closed and locked the door and called his uncle, letting him know what had happened and asking if he had any idea how someone would have gotten inside.

His uncle seemed skeptical at the idea of an intruder in the first place, but when Shuichi mentioned _who_ it was he became fully accepting of the idea. In fact, he was in such quick belief of his nephew's claim that he said he'd be right over to the building to do an inspection, before…something else happened, a garbled mess of words that Shuichi asked for clarification on but got nothing. That inspection never happened, his uncle never set foot in the building again, and within a week all of the tenants were being asked to leave by the new management of the building, who wanted to use the homes for office space instead of for people to live in.

Now without a home to call his own, Shuichi was cast out to find somewhere else to live without anyone's assistance, a task made much harder when most people he'd known in the previous world wanted nothing to do with him. He was too much of a liability, carrying with him too much of a chance of death for going against the way the world worked, that no one was willing to look past their screens to give him a chance. His search led him to several homeless shelters, where the walls were plastered with screens to show the perks and great qualities of the current society to the people who were unfortunate enough to not be set up for success while living in it, and he bounced between them, never wanting to get too comfortable in one just in case something happened.

But the something he was fearful of _did_ happen, and that something was one of Kaede's advertisements coming across the screens, her bright and peppy piano music blasting through the dreary shelter and immediately catching his attention. With amazed eyes he tracked her every move across the screens, as if she was actively inside them and jumping from panel to panel; her existence as a real person and not just a technical marvel was something that most people would doubt based on how she was so flawless in her motions, but he knew her to be quite real. He couldn't stand to see her face, though, not when she'd been the one responsible for causing him to be uprooted from the home he'd had, and so he walked out of the shelter to get some fresh air, expecting to be able to come back that night for a cot and a warm meal.

When he returned mere hours later, the building had been marked as condemned and the nearly two hundred people who'd been staying there were forced out onto the streets, expected to go find somewhere else to live out their miserable lives. This was her doing and he knew it, she was reckless in her approach to trying to stop the darkness, and he needed to stop her before she ruined even more lives. Figuring that she was trying to convince him to join her cause, because he was a detective even when he shouldn't have been and she was a popular face, Shuichi decided right then that he wasn't going to let any more lives be destroyed by her attempts to sway him—and if any more were destroyed, it was going to be their own.

He found her at the same screen he'd first seen her on, sitting in front of the store with her piano of light in front of her and her fingers jumping across the keys like they were stones in a river. "I've been waiting for you," she said, not looking up from her playing. "It's been a couple weeks but I haven't stopped thinking about when we first met and I've been waiting to meet you again."

"You made my uncle lose his building and got a homeless shelter closed down, and all you're going to say is that you've been waiting for me?" He was annoyed and he was not doing a great job of masking that fact, something that Kaede picked up on immediately. As he watched, she swiped her piano keys out of existence, looking into his eyes with her bright-yet-hollow ones. "I want an answer, Kaede. A real one."

"I can't help that it happened," she protested with a whine, cupping her cheeks with her gloved hands and pouting. "It's not my fault that the government's always watching me and they're making sure I can't get into any trouble, even though they're the ones who started the trouble in the first place!"

He narrowed his eyes as he listened to her explanation, before shaking his head. "There isn't any 'government' anymore, whatever you're talking about isn't real. This world's lawless, that's how everything's falling apart, and you want to tell me that the government is keeping tabs on you?"

"It's true, it really is!" She looked pitiful as her pout grew, the hollowness in her eyes being replaced by genuine sadness. "I'm just trying to bring a little light to the lives of the people and the government keeps stopping me whenever they get the chance, but they hired me to spread the word of the great things they want from the world! I can't do my job if they're sabotaging me, you know!"

At once, Shuichi understood why Kaede was so interesting to him, in the short amount of time he'd known her. She was countering the cyberpunk culture by spreading what she thought was the message of the government, even though the message she really was spreading was the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted her to use her talents as a cyber-minded pianist to enslave the minds of the population, not to convince people to rally against what was keeping them down, and even though their paths to get to where they were had been quite different Shuichi began to feel a bit of comradery with her. "I get it, I've been feeling the same way with my detective work," he told her, offering her a hand as she pried one of hers off of her face, taking his in it. "Maybe we can find somewhere quiet to sit and talk, where no government officials will hear us, and we can come up with a plan to get us both what we want out of things."

"I'd love to, I know where this little hangout is of people involved in the lit-up resistance who may be interested in helping us."

"Let's not get any strange ideas, I'm not part of your resistance, I'm just working with you." He squeezed her hand, a gesture she didn't seem to know how to return, and Shuichi knew that working with Kaede was either going to change his life for the better, or end it.

* * *

**A/N: I don't know the first thing about "cyberpunk" so here we are**


	6. Opposite Seasons

If there was one thing about the springtime that Kaede loved most, it was getting to see all of the flowers blossoming, the world lighting up with color after the dullness of the winter months. She loved getting to watch the new buds start blooming, the sweet scent of all the different types of flowers filling her nose every time she stepped outside, the visually-appealing bursts of beauty bringing joy to her eyes and her heart. There was never enough time in the day to spend time with Shuichi and practice the piano and get to spend whole afternoons out among the flowers, but she tried her best to make the balance work however she could, even if it meant slacking on her practice or being late to meetings with her boyfriend every once in a while.

It was completely normal for Shuichi to head over to her house looking for her on spring days, only to find that she'd been gone since morning to look at the flowers. There were typical paths and gardens she'd stroll through, so he knew where he could find her if she wasn't at home, and that meant awkwardly evading conversation with her parents or her sister in order to go locate who he was looking for. He wasn't nearly as fond of the springtime as she was, the pollen from the flowers typically becoming an inconvenience after he'd spend a little bit of time around them, but he would always put up with the itchy eyes and the somewhat runny nose if it meant seeing Kaede so happy.

On one particular day, he went to check the large public garden close to her house after he'd shown up and she wasn't home, and he found her sitting on one of the stone benches, a small keyboard on her lap and her eyes focused ahead of her on a flowering bush. As quietly as he could, he snuck up behind her, trying to come up with a way to announce his presence without breaking her concentration, but before he'd approached too closely she began playing something on the keyboard, gentle piano music filling the sweet-smelling air. At once he stopped moving forward, knowing that getting closer and disrupting her playing would cause more harm than good, and so he stood several paces behind her, just listening to the song she was playing.

After a few minutes of music she let her notes trail off, followed by her picking the keyboard up and setting it on the bench next to her. "I know you're there, Shuichi," she said, catching him by surprise and causing him to jump at hearing his name unexpectedly. "I could hear your breathing the whole time, it made for a good metronome to play to."

"I, er, thank you," he replied, never having noticed that he was breathing loudly in the first place. Now that she'd let him know she knew he was present, he went to sit on her other side, trying his hardest not to let the overwhelming scent of the flowers start getting to him. This was a lovely moment of Kaede's he had no interest in ruining with his springtime sniffles, and he was going to make sure that he kept himself together as long as he was there with her. "You sounded lovely on your keyboard there. Was that an original song?"

"No, it was just me throwing notes together." Based on how she laughed before she spoke, he could assume that what she said was just a joke, but he wasn't as good as music as she was and had no idea if a pianist could actually make such quality music off the cuff. "My parents were scolding me for spending more time out here than at my piano, so I brought out the old keyboard that I used to take lessons on at school. It's kind of a pain to drag out here, but it let me play piano in the garden so that's worth it, I'd say."

He nodded, looking at the pure joy in Kaede's eyes as she was talking about being outside among the flowers. "If it makes you happy, and gets your parents off your back, then it's definitely worth it."

"That's what I thought too!" She laughed again, glancing over at him and grinning when she saw how awestruck he seemed to be at her expression, but she noticed that the rims of his eyes were somewhat reddened. "Say, Shuichi, since you don't like being in the flowers so much, why are you out here? Couldn't you have just seen I was here and gone back to my house to wait for me? Why are you suffering to be with me?"

His words came quickly, and without him really processing that he was saying them until he'd gotten them out. "Because I love you, that's why."

She gave a single laugh, before realizing that he was serious, and that he'd just offhandedly admitted his love for her, out in the open where other people _could have_ heard it (yes they were dating and yes they were well-aware of how the other felt, but he never publicly called attention to his feelings), and from there she lost control of her emotions. Bubbly, completely ecstatic at what she'd heard, Kaede leaned over into Shuichi and wrapped him tightly in her strong arms, scooting him close to her so that their legs were touching. "I love you too, and I love you so much that I think you're silly for risking the sniffles to be with me right now."

"I feel fine, don't worry about me," he replied, his face heating up not because of her concern or the slip of his tongue but rather because of how close she was to him, her skirt and bare thigh brushing up against the leg of his pants. He could feel her taking in every breath, and based on how she was beginning to nestle her head against his chest he knew she was trying to listen to what she claimed was her favorite sound—his heartbeat, going wild at the contact she was giving him. Or, at any rate, it was the contact and something else he'd noticed that was causing his heart to beat rapidly. "H-hey, sit up straight, I can see down your shirt from here. I don't think you want everyone seeing that."

"No one else is here to see a thing, Shuichi," she quietly said, pressing her ear to where she knew she'd get the best chance of hearing his heart beating. They sat there with silence between them, as she heard his heart and he took in how tightly she was holding him. It wasn't that they hadn't done that sort of thing before many times, nor was it that he wasn't used to her holding her in such a way, but the venue, the choice of location for where they were getting so touchy-feely was what was strangest of all. He couldn't help but keep peeking down her shirt, seeing the curves of her chest that prevented him from trying to return the favor of hearing her heart; it was taking a lot of his strength to not set a hand on one of her pale thighs and let its warmth radiate through his fingertips. He loved Kaede more than most things in the world, and would gladly put his well-being aside if it meant seeing her happy, and she deserved more than a withdrawn boyfriend to spend her life with.

If the flowers in the garden had ears, what they'd have heard next would have been enough to get them all to close their petals, to turn their blossoms away from the disruption to their quiet life in their bushes. It came after she pulled herself away from him, saying something about the melody of his heart being so romantic and how she wished that she could hear it all the time, something that got the gears in his mind turning. "You know, there is a way to hear it all the time, or at least more of the time," he pointed out, her giving a little noise of surprise in return. "We could move in together, share a bed, stuff like that."

"Wow, what inspired you to make that kind of suggestion?" she asked, genuinely surprised that Shuichi was the one to bring up the idea of co-living with her. In response, he started blushing violently, stammering that he was just thinking about ways to solve the problem of her wanting to hear his heart more. "No, don't think I think it's bad! I really like it, I just…I know my parents might be a _little_ concerned about me running off and living with a boy when I'm not married. They might jump to conclusions, accuse me of throwing away my future, that sort of stuff."

"They know me, they know that that's not how it would be at all." Taking in a deep breath, Shuichi ended up coughing at how strongly he could smell all of the flowers, and as he was trying to stop himself Kaede resumed hugging him tightly, which only resulted in him coughing harder. Realizing that she was part of the problem, she pulled herself away and tried apologizing, but the second he could properly breathe he was leaning into her for himself, bringing with him some puckered lips and an attempt to get her to understand he didn't blame her for anything. The kiss that followed was short and sweet, but the impassioned exchange of "I love you" that came after was what broke into the much longer, more sustained sequence of kisses and wandering hands that the flowers would have shied away from if possible.

This was the springtime of their youth and they were going to do as lovers did, letting their romance bloom as much as they could as fast as they could. But unlike spring's flowers, their love would last throughout the year.

* * *

If there was one thing about autumn that Shuichi loved most, it was being able to sit outside and watch the changing colors of the leaves with a true crime novel in his lap, a blanket nearby in case of a brisk breeze, and no worries about the sunlight getting too unbearable and hot while he was there. He loved being able to be outdoors without worry of heatstroke (wearing primarily black was not wise in summertime) or freezing, and without the flowers and blossoms of springtime around he could breathe easily and not be stuck in a vicious cycle of sneezes and sniffles while outside. It was, in his opinion, a lovely season, and he would spend as much time enjoying it as he could before the weather would turn sour and it would get too cold to stay out for more than a few minutes.

Transporting his work outside to do it there was easy, as long as he wasn't in the middle of an active investigation that had him trapped indoors. During the autumn months, he would take up as many cases about missing animals as he could, enjoying the chance to explore the outdoors in its chilled glory while helping someone out, and whenever he'd finish a case he would write his reports outside rather than inside his office at his desk. If he had to stay inside he'd have the windows fully open, so that he could at least smell the change of the weather in the air and see the leaves as their colors darkened until they found their death, falling onto the ground until they were collected into piles.

Kaede liked the autumn as well, but not for the same reasons that Shuichi liked it, and she was always waiting until those piles of leaves had been built for her to get her enjoyment out of the season. Sure, she could have a good time sitting next to him while he was reading or working, a cup of hot cider in her hands to keep her whole body warm, but she found much more thrill in taking running starts and jumping into the piles of leaves, exactly as a child a third of her age would do it. He found the behavior fun to watch, but never something he would take part it, and so when the time came for the piles to have been collected and created, he would watch as she would dive into them, always popping out of them with a large grin and a laugh, asking him to join her.

"I can't, I'm in the middle of this," he'd always tell her, motioning to whatever it was that he was doing, whether it was reading a novel or writing up a report, and she'd reply by taking a handful of leaves and throwing them in his direction, letting the wind carry them however it wanted to, whether that was at him, back at her, or away from them both. This would happen over and over again, until there were no more piles for her to jump into, at which point she'd trudge back to sitting next to him, little flecks of leaves clinging to her from head to toe. He'd remark about how much fun it looked like she had been having and she'd laugh, throwing her head back and hugging him with one arm to share her joy with him.

Things were perfect as they were, them both doing what they wanted to outside in the autumn sunshine, but every day they went through the same routine, until the weather started getting too cold and wet to go out and play. That first day where playing in the leaves wasn't an option, Kaede lamented to Shuichi that she never got to see him let loose and jump in the piles with her. "It was a lot of fun, and you missed out on it," she said, jutting her lower lip out to make her look sad about the topic. "You should've done it, just once, I wouldn't have told anyone you broke out of being so uptight to have some fun."

"It's not that I'm uptight, please," he replied, watching as she playfully rolled her eyes at the assertion. "I just wasn't interested in playing in the leaves. All you did was cause more work for whoever it was that piled them like that, because you didn't ever grab a rake and clean them yourself."

"And how would you know that for certain?" she asked, raising her eyebrows as high as she could to seem like she was asking a genuine question, but they both knew that she hadn't once touched a rake before or after her shenanigans. His blank look at her gave her the answer she knew she deserved, and she let out a loud whine. "Come on, Shuichi, you're such a stick in the mud sometimes! We could've had so much fun, but now we'll have to wait until next autumn to give it another shot!"

He looked out the front window of his humble apartment, a place that he never spent much time because Kaede wasn't typically there, and saw the puddles of rain that had started falling, the cool water marking the end of the leaf-jumping season. Even if the rainstorm was a fluke and it went back to nicer weather after, the piles would be too soggy to jump in again, and there weren't enough leaves left that needed to fall to make more. "I'm fine with that," he said, seeing no problem with waiting for another year to pass before he inevitably didn't do anything different. "It'll be the same then as it was this autumn, I'm not really interested in playing in the leaves and that's not going to change."

Another whine came from Kaede's lips, as she leaned in close to her boyfriend's body, her cheeks puffing out in frustration with his denial of her idea of a fun time. "But it's so great to run and jump into all those leaves, to hear them crunching underneath you when you land! I bet I could make some great music based on the fun I have doing it, and you just wouldn't understand a note of it!"

"Oh, I bet I'd understand some of the notes." It wasn't anything he was going to admit to, but part of why Shuichi didn't want to jump into the piles of leaves with Kaede was the fact that if he was participating, he wouldn't be able to sit by and see the pure happiness on her face as she made her approach, watching the way she looked so youthful and blissful with every running step she took. He wouldn't be able to see the way her whole body bounced as she ran, his reaction to some of the movement being covered by whatever book or papers he was holding on his lap at that moment. And, most of all, he wouldn't be able to witness her popping out of the pile, looking like a child in a candy store, excited about what she'd done and considering doing it again in a heartbeat.

"Yeah? Why do you think that would be, you've never experienced what I have!" She waited for his response, but his one-shouldered shrug was all she got, and from there she began rambling about the intricacies of leaf-jumping and how they'd translate to music, and all he could do was sit there and listen to it all. Her passion was contagious, and utterly adorable, and it was hard for Shuichi to take it in when she got so worked up about the things she loved most. The way her eyes crinkled as she grinned, the way she'd occasionally trail off mid-thought and bounce back into what she was saying with a laugh, it was all too much for him to handle sometimes.

But that was the beauty of their relationship, him putting up with what made her happiest even though he didn't quite understand it all the time. He didn't often subject her to what he enjoyed most (talking about crimes he'd researched or cases he was working on), but he was always there for her to go on and on about the things that made her heart soar—and in the process of it the conversations and interactions always made his spirits rise. That was true love, he figured, and it didn't matter if he was just sitting by or actively taking part in whatever Kaede was interested in, as long as he could see her so exuberant then he could say that he was having a good time as well.

"If we have any more nice days this year, I'll take my keyboard outside and see if I can create a quick song about the leaves," Kaede said, bringing everything back to the original topic, "and you can sit out there and listen with me. The garden's pretty nice for that sort of thing, even when everything's brown and dying, so maybe we can meet there."

"I'd say it's a date," he replied, certain he'd prefer the garden in autumn than he ever could in the springtime. "And if it doesn't work out this year, then there's always next year, right?"

She nodded, her whole body moving along with the action, before she cupped her cheeks and proclaimed, completely seriously: "There's all the years in the future, Shuichi! We've got all the time in the world to spend together!"

* * *

**A/N: This is the one instance this week of me combining both prompts for the same story, but I think it worked better this way haha**


	7. Unfair Realities of Life

Stories about love and romance and happily ever afters may make someone feel good, but it was hardly often that they really happened the way they went in stories. That would be because the modern world was a hard and expensive place to live in, and if it wasn't for the fact that there wasn't much of a choice but to live in it, the young twenty-somethings named Kaede and Shuichi would have easily found some other place to live out their dreams. Sure, they were both accomplished and talented and had things going for them that made it a little easier to get by each month, but the truth was that they were barely getting by, at best, and one small setback would have horrendous consequences if anything were to happen to them.

Their first sign that things were about to come crashing down around them was when, in the span of a week, both of them had their hours working severely cut; the town's crime rate had lowered dramatically and it wasn't financially smart to keep two full-time detectives at the agency, which meant that Shuichi didn't have somewhere to be all day, every day like he'd been used to, and Kaede had several of her regular clients pack up and move out of town without warning, leaving her without that income. Not wanting to alarm the other that something had happened to their work flow, they both pretended like everything was fine and assumed that the other would cover the slack for their lack of money until they found a way to replace the funds, which then resulted in them being way under what they needed at the end of the month to pay their bills.

"I'm trying to get my uncle to let me help out more, but if it doesn't work then I'm going to look at other agencies, but it would've been nice to know that you weren't working much either," Shuichi said once it became a necessity to come clean about things. "If you'd told me you weren't going to lessons every time you went out, I would've worked harder to get things sorted out right away."

"Don't push it onto me, it's not my fault that I didn't know you weren't doing detective work all the time anymore!" Pouting at her boyfriend's behavior, Kaede was not exactly owning up to her own involvement, and the reason for that became clear when she explained what she'd been doing instead of making money. "As soon as I got the word that I didn't have those families to teach anymore, I started looking for other ways to get my music and talent out there, and I found this website…"

Sighing, having heard far too many people he'd been helping through crime solving talking about talent-based websites, Shuichi managed to look Kaede in the eyes for a second before the shine in hers drove him to look away. "You're going to get scammed, Kaede. That's what happens on all of those sites, people promise money and nothing ever comes of it."

"No, it's not like that! It's a site where you upload music and people pay you for it! I've been getting some of my original pieces made digital so I can put them on there, and last I checked no one's bought anything yet but I know it'll happen, I'm good enough for people to want to pay for my music!" She was so optimistic about what she'd resulted to do that it was hard for Shuichi to keep putting her down, but he knew she'd fallen into a pit from which she wasn't going to get out without realizing a key fact about herself. No one in their right mind was going to pay for piano music online, not when they could download digital keyboards to create their own, and the sooner Kaede realized that the sooner she'd be back to looking for new clients to teach how to play piano.

"I love you, Kaede, but I think you need to focus on tried-and-true ways of getting money, not something that expects strangers to help you out." That was about the gentlest way he could word his thoughts, and hearing her whine about doubting her hurt him deep down, but he couldn't let her waste her time and effort when they both needed to get things back in order financially.

But life wasn't done throwing curveballs in their direction, and if making them both lose part of their income wasn't bad enough, there were more daunting problems coming at them even more suddenly. The first was a major accident in her family, which required her to leave town for a few days to visit relatives on death's door, and since their savings were quickly dwindling because neither of them were making what they needed to be stable in life, that was an unexpected drain on their combined finances. Then, right as they had managed to budget things out so that they had enough money to pay for what they needed to for the next months, another unwanted gift was dropped into their laps, or more specifically, physically into one of theirs.

It wasn't that they'd told themselves and each other that they didn't want children, it was more that they had never gotten around to discussing a timeline, to talking about when they'd want to start having a family of their own. And in all honesty, the worst possible time was when they were financially unstable, trying to rebuild their lives after the blows they'd taken—but that was exactly what was happening to them, and they weren't going to change a thing about it. If anything, the idea of having a child in their lives in the near future was a better way to motivate them to fix things than anything had been up to that point, because if they couldn't support themselves, how in the world would they be able to support a child as well? They wouldn't be able to, and they couldn't allow for that to happen.

Of course, the moment that their families found out that they were having a child out of wedlock, despite having been together for several years, anything that could have been considered a support system was blown out the window. Kaede's parents were furious with her for throwing away her life goals, comparing her to people who did illicit activities on street corners, and refused further contact with her (although her sister did try to defend her honor, but still went along with their parents' wishes and stopped talking to her immediately), and Shuichi's uncle, who was already financially strapped himself due to the waning crimes in town, told them outright that he wouldn't be able to do anything for them. There were friends they could turn to in order to get help, they knew that to be true, but after those back-to-back blows delivered to them by their families they weren't interested in trying to get help from anyone else at the moment.

What should have been a happier time in their lives was completely marred by negativity, and the stress of trying to set things right was beginning to become unbearable to them both, him much more than her. While she was still perfectly content with working the few lessons each week she did, as well as trying to peddle her music online to an uncaring audience, he knew that he had to step up and start bringing in more money than he had been before everything, to cover their debts and start saving up for whatever else the world had in store for them. That drove him to take some daring risks, to put in his resignation from his spot at his uncle's detective agency for greener grasses elsewhere, to show up with his work history in hand at the single most notable agency in town hoping that they'd give him a chance.

For most people, walking up to the receptionist's desk with a resume and asking for a job when there were no positions available would end in disaster, but most people weren't detectives with a hefty list of cases they'd solved. Most people weren't as overqualified for a basic job as Shuichi was, and after seeing the name on the top of the resume the receptionist called for the head of the agency to come down and talk to him. That was one of the most nerve-wracking encounters he could have ever asked for, seeing the woman with pale purple hair enter the room and ask for his paperwork, touching on the different points he'd made with her gloved fingers.

By the time she'd read half of it she was already asking him to follow her back to her office, so that they could talk in private. The interview was impromptu, but it was lengthy, and for the entire duration of it Shuichi was hoping that his credentials had enough to them to give the impression he needed with this woman. She listened to his story carefully, asking him to speak up a few times when he'd start to trail off, thinking he was saying too much, and when they wrapped up she gave it to him straight: she couldn't promise him a full-time job, nor could she promise him a lofty salary, but she could get him in several days a week, working directly underneath her as a detective on more serious cases than the ones he'd been doing with his uncle.

There was potential there, as well as a bit of a pay increase from what he'd previously been making, so he took the offer in a heartbeat, getting everything arranged quickly and being sent on his way with a firm welcome to the team. The whole way home he had to keep reminding himself that the stupid thing he'd done had worked in his favor, and that he was returning home to his girlfriend with a new, better job in his possession. Kaede was impressed to hear what he'd done, but she seemed hesitant to be excited about things when she heard what, exactly, he'd be doing in his new position. "I thought you said homicides weren't something that interested you," she said, her head tilting from side to side as she recalled what she'd once heard. "So why are you working somewhere where that's all you'll be investigating?"

"Because it's money, and because it's working with the famous Kyoko Kirigiri. If she believes I can do it, then what's stopping me?" There were, in fact, a lot of things that could be stopping him, but he couldn't allow himself to give up this better job just because of what it would be dealing with. He loved investigating things, he'd solved petty crimes and kidnappings and attempted murders before, and he assumed that solving actual murders wouldn't be too much different than what he was comfortable with.

He was dead wrong about that, but by the time he'd realized he was in over his head there was no way he could back out of what he was involved in. The first time he had to face a mutilated corpse he nearly vomited, and he could have sworn that the stench of death and decay lingered in his hair and clothes for weeks after. But with Kaede and their unborn child in mind he pushed through, not wanting to be seen as a failure because he couldn't do what it took to support them, and his resilience was something that Kyoko herself noticed, complimenting him on his work ethic and promising him a better position the moment one opened up for him.

But just because he'd found a job where he was making decent money didn't mean that the world had suddenly become less expensive, and he and Kaede found themselves starting to struggle even more financially, due to everything else going on in their lives. Even though she'd begun taking a couple more piano students each week, together they weren't making enough to keep paying for their home, plus working on the debts they'd acquired, as well as making the preparations for their child, and something was going to have to change before they lost everything.

That was where their friends came in, others who weren't even well-off in regards to money but were always willing to help wherever they could; there were many options that they bounced around but the one that ended up being the overwhelmingly popular one was finding somewhere else to live. The idea was that they'd move into a bigger home, with more room for them and a child, and have one of their friends in specific help them afford it by living with them (and, when the time came, offering free childcare because he didn't really have a job of his own). Things became hectic between work and packing up and everything else that they had going on, but after about a month after they'd initially made the plans they'd boxed everything they owned up and moved it into a new place.

Living with Kaito was _never_ an option they'd really wanted to have to work with, but he was easily the one of their friends who had the easiest access to money, given that his grandparents financially supported him and whatever he wanted to do at any given time, and so he weaseled himself into their lives as a third income to help them get by. Sure, the payments they were making monthly to live in the new place weren't much less than what they'd been paying before, but there was more space and it _was_ a little cheaper, which meant that they had the money to start working on those other things.

Being an adult was hard, and making grown-up choices was harder, but they were going to do the best they could with what they had, and they weren't going to let anything get them down no matter what. That perseverance paid off eventually, when Kyoko was able to keep to her word and got Shuichi a full-time position where he was making enough to pay for their home each month by himself, and that boost in income was enough to offset for when Kaede was unable to work for several months. Of course, by that point there was something else that had become a giant drain on their finances, and so the extra money was never really seen by anyone but the people at the store, as they were spending it exclusively on things for their newborn child.

They were still in love with each other, and in love with the family they'd created together, but things weren't ever going to be easy for them, it seemed. Even with someone living with them there to give a hand as needed, things were a constant struggle, and just when they'd think everything was going right, they'd be sent staggering backwards, another blow taken in some way, shape, or form. But as long as they had each other, they were going to be okay, come hell or high water. The modern world was cruel, and wasn't going to bow to anything that they threw at it, but as long as they kept adapting to the changes that were thrown back at them, they were going to be just fine. From kitchen fires to broken bones, from car wrecks to workplace disputes, they could manage to get through things with each other as their source of strength, and that was what mattered.

* * *

**A/N: oops I may have accidentally given a harsh commentary on life using one of my prompts**


	8. Art History Class

There was one year left before Kaede could walk across the stage with her college degree, a piece of paper that merely stated that she'd been educated in musical theories, and that she could play piano in front of a panel of professors and they deemed her successful. But before she could get there, she had to finish taking a list of classes that combined both high-level music theory classes, two seminars that involved playing piano almost exclusively, and some classes she'd skipped when she'd first started attending college and needed to make up somehow. That was how, as a senior in college, she walked into a freshman-level art history class, needing to take something in the visual arts as an elective to get the degree she'd been working hard on.

It was predictable, everyone in the class looked so young, because it was the kind of class that everyone took right away and rarely left for the end of their college career, but Kaede was there and she was going to make herself enjoy every second of it. She sat down at an empty table, setting her textbook and note papers on the desk and waited to see who else would file into the room before the class started, hoping that there wouldn't be too many more people and that she'd be able to use the whole table for all of her papers, specifically so that she could move her texts to the side and work on some music theory stuff while in class. But as the rest of the tables filled up and she was the only person left partner-less, the reality sank in that she was going to have to share a table with someone who may not be as open to her using their space.

The last person that came into the room, right as the professor was beginning to start class, was someone that Kaede recognized from a couple previous classes, back when she'd taken the majority of her general education courses, and while she couldn't remember his name she felt comfortable with letting him sit at the table with her. "You look familiar," he remarked as he rushed to the seat, the brim of his hat covering most of his face, and she'd have most likely said the same if the professor hadn't started talking right then. He took the seat, getting out his own materials, and Kaede couldn't help but watch as he opened his notebook and wrote the date and class name at the top of the first page. She was hoping that he would write his name there so she could remember it, but it hit her that he wouldn't need to do that, because it was his _own_ notebook.

For the entire first half of the class, she was consumed with curiosity when it came to his name, and her answer came when the professor finally got around to taking attendance. As it usually was, she was first on the list, and when she cheerfully announced her presence she could see the guy next to her glance in her direction, his mouth repeating her name without a sound. It was clear that he was putting the name to the face and she gave him a cheesy grin to remember her with, and he seemed surprised at her realizing that she was being looked at, and so he turned away once more. He didn't do anything except stare forward at where the name-calling was coming from, and when the professor started with what was definitely an _S_ name, he paused, looked at the guy with a quiet nod, and moved on from there, which meant that she was going to have to find his name some other way.

That meant breaking into conversation when they were given a couple minutes to get to know the person they were sitting with. "So, are you an art major or something?" she asked, trying to figure out why the professor had gotten exactly one letter of his name out before skipping him. "I mean, you're on face-to-name basis with our teacher, right?"

"No, I'm a criminal justice major, I just…one time I helped him figure out who stole some of his materials from his office overnight, he's always asked me to take one of his classes and this was the one I ended up in." The guy seemed flustered to be talking to her, and when she tilted her head to one side, begging for further information, he added, "I didn't expect to see you here, you're a pretty big talent here at the school, aren't you, Miss Akamatsu?"

Hearing herself be addressed in such a formal way by a stammering mess of a man was humorous to Kaede, but she had the decency not to laugh in his face at his behavior. "Please, call me Kaede, it's what everyone does," she told him, "and I wouldn't say I'm a 'big' talent, I'm just a pianist getting my degree. And getting that degree means taking freshman art history when I'm so close to graduating."

"I didn't mean anything by that," he said, scooting his chair back slightly to get further away from her than he already was, confusing her as she didn't see anywhere that she might have insulted or upset him, nor did she feel upset by what he'd said. "I just…oh, who cares, it's a stupid thought in the first place. You're here because you have to be to get your degree, I'm here because I needed another class in my schedule and the professor felt like he owed me one. Two different worlds."

"Whoa, who said anything about that?" As she was speaking, Kaede could see how he was fidgeting with the brim of his hat, bringing it down further into his face so that she couldn't even see a sliver of his eyes without leaning over and making a serious effort to hold eye contact with him. "I'm here because it was the only class on the list that sounded like I might possibly enjoy it, since they wanted me in an artsy course that's nothing to do with music, don't make it sound like I'm going to hate the class or something!"

That was the end of their discussion time, as other students had begun getting rowdy and the professor needed to get everyone back on task, and so she was left sitting there, occasionally glancing over at the guy next to her who was focused on everything but her, wondering what his deal was. She wasn't even given a chance to ask him when class was over, because he was packed up and out the door the second they were dismissed, leaving exactly when it was no longer to be rude to do so. Taking matters into her own hands, she approached the professor about it, making up a story about how she'd had such a lovely conversation with the boy next to her but she'd forgotten his name already, and he was happy to refresh her memory on the topic. "Ah yes, Shuichi Saihara, what a strapping young gentleman. Why, did you know that two years ago, he assisted me with solving a theft of my own materials?"

"He may have mentioned that, yeah," she replied, not caring about a single word that followed the delivery of his name. How she'd forgotten such a memorable name, she wasn't sure, but she distinctly remembered that she'd spent a fair amount of time in the previous classes she'd shared with Shuichi wondering why he didn't speak to her, why he would look in her direction but never say a thing. It was nice to see that he wasn't afraid to talk to her anymore, but he was still being cagey and skittish about something, and if there was one thing she accomplished that term (minus passing the class and being that much closer to graduating), it was going to be breaking through his shell and getting to know him properly for the first time.

On the second day of the class, Kaede entered the room with a half-baked plan in mind; she was going to be friendly towards Shuichi, but only if he offered up conversation with her. If he stayed shy and withdrawn, she wasn't going to force anything, but she knew that she would need to take any opportunity that was given to her, so even a hello would be enough to get her to start talking to him. She was early as always, and so she set up her belongings as she wanted them to be and waited for his arrival, keeping the seat next to her open and pulled out slightly from the table, a perfect place for him to sit.

Shuichi showed up just as the class was about to start, and his eyes immediately fell on that open seat because it was, once again, the only one left in the room. He reached up and pulled his hat down as he approached the table, and took the seat without so much as a mumble in Kaede's direction, which felt somewhat insulting to her until she remembered that this guy hadn't ever been talkative or even friendly in any of their previous encounters, so there was no reason that would change at all this time. All she could do was keep a positive outlook about things and keep extending her kindness towards him any chance she got, so that he knew that she was trying to be as nice as possible.

The next week's classes went the same way, although at the end of the fourth session he did give her a quiet thanks when he dropped his pen and she picked it up for him, but just like every class before he was bolting out the door the first chance he got. Trying to break through his armor was going to be a challenge, but Kaede was up for it, as it was going to be something to distract from the relative easiness of the course itself. If she'd encountered him in a theory class she'd never have had the time to devote to being the world's nicest person towards him, that was for certain. She was positive that by the time the term was over she'd have made a friend out of him, and that was what drove her to continue being the single most sunshine-y person in the whole classroom towards the poor guy, even when he obviously didn't want the affection or kindness.

It was while she was walking to class about a month into the endeavor that she heard what was definitely his voice down the hall, and she froze when she was able to start making out words. "I'm always like, what do I do about it? I'm not good with feelings and people," she heard him say, and while she liked to think that she knew who he was talking about, she didn't want to jump to conclusions. "Do I drop the class now, or do I suck it up and hope this is the last time I have to deal with this?"

"Nah man, dropping now is a waste of money, they've already taken tuition anyway so you'd just be forcing yourself to pay more later." She gasped when she heard the second voice, because she had definitely run across the lofty-dreaming Kaito Momota a few times during her years of college, but she had no idea that Shuichi knew him. "If I were you, I'd just waltz into that room and tell them how you feel about things, it's stupid to play games with people's minds like that. Trust me, I know a thing or two about that sorta thing, have ya seen how Maki Roll gets around me?"

"But…talking with people is part of the problem, Kaito." Now Kaede was certain that the person in particular that needed to be talked to was herself, and as much as she didn't care for Kaito she didn't want to actively sabotage his plan for Shuichi that she wasn't supposed to know about, so she left the eavesdropping there and went to class as fast as she could. Following routine was easy, she did it every day for every class she attended, but as she sat there waiting for Shuichi's inevitable entrance into the room she felt herself getting impatient. To combat that, she began practicing piano scales on the edge of the table, her fingers pressing down on invisible keys that no one else in the world would ever quite understand like she did, and even if the tapping annoyed anyone else she was too far lost in her own world to care. The only things on her mind right then were the pretend music, and the guy who typically sat at her table with her, who apparently had something to say to her.

She wasn't the only one who followed routine, and even though she knew that he'd been right down the hall the whole time, Shuichi once again came into class right as things were starting, greeting the professor with a small nod before taking his normal seat. There was, as usual, no time for conversation, but he did slide a small piece of paper in her direction after he'd unpacked his belongings, and she tried not to look too eager as she grabbed it and read it over—finding that it was a note asking her to meet him outside one of the building's entrances after class. The location was not one that was frequently used by students, but it was visible from many different places on campus so it made sense that someone who wasn't comfortable with an interaction would want to talk there. To let him know she was agreeing to the terms she gave him a thumbs-up, but she couldn't tell if he'd seen it or not due to his hat blocking his eyes from her view.

Their release from class that day was staggered, because they were taking a test that they finished at their own paces, and she was done long before he was, so she spent what felt like forever sitting outside those entrance doors, hoping that every time they opened it would be Shuichi coming out them. Time escaped her, she had no idea how long she was actually there, but when she started wondering if perhaps he'd lied to her to get her to leave him alone, he showed up around the exterior of the building, his hat pulled back so that his whole face was on display. "Kaede, I'm sure you're wondering why I brought you here," he started, keeping his distance from her as he paced through the grass that surrounded the building, her watching his every move. "I promise it's nothing bad, I just…I need to talk to you and I don't know how to say what I want to say."

"Whatever it is, I won't mind how you say it," she replied with a smile, trying not to make it too obvious that she'd heard his dilemma already and that she'd started coming to her own conclusions. "Just tell me what it is and we'll go from there."

It must have been a nervous tic, but Shuichi reached up for his hat and pulled it off his head, so that he could wring it in his hands, even though he was wearing an over-the-shoulder bag that he could've done the same to with the strap. "It's weird, I'd never talked to you before we started this class, but ever since I first saw you, I wanted to get to know you. I've gone to your recitals before and watched you play piano, which you're brilliant at, and we've had classes together, but I'd never said a word to you and I doubt you remembered I existed before I sat next to you. But…even with that…"

She felt a twinge of guilt because she _had_ forgotten his name despite them having had the same classes before, but it had been a couple years since then and she had a mind that hyper-focused on piano music and nothing else. She had to remind herself that she had recognized him when he entered the classroom on the first day, though, and that meant something. "I think I know where this is going, and I totally agree. I'm super flattered that you remembered me all this time and liked what I do, but you should've reached out sooner! I'm not scary, I promise! I'm just like everyone else, I just happen to be good at piano!"

"You agree?" he repeated, his face going bright red and his hat falling from his loose fingers. "So…do you have a class after this? I think we could, uh, talk more over dinner? My treat? Maybe? If you want?" That was when it dawned on her that maybe she'd interpreted things a bit incorrectly, and that he was possibly asking her out on a date, but she was too committed to making friends with him to look that gift horse in the eye. If he wanted to date her, that was being even closer than friends, and she wasn't going to turn down a free meal and a chance to break those walls around that boy's heart.

And so, within a month of the beginning of their art history class, Kaede and Shuichi found each other not for the first time, but for the final time—and their lives were so, so much better for it. The next time they walked into class it was together, taking their seats as usual but actually talking as they waited for class to start, and by the time they were walking in for the last time they were more than just casual strangers who'd crossed paths one too many times. They weren't going to be young forever, so moving into dating was what felt most natural for them and their relationship, and that was about as "broken" as those walls were going to get in her opinion.

In taking an entry-level class way later than expected, Kaede never thought she'd find the love of her life, but she did and that was the best thing that ever could've come out of an off-major course she didn't actually want to take.

* * *

**A/N: I may have gone to college myself and never had a cute meeting like this, but I felt it fit the pair lol**


	9. Peaceful Birthday

Shuichi's birthday was coming up, and there was nothing he wanted more than a nice afternoon to sit in relative silence with his girlfriend, with conversation happening wherever necessary but the main draw to the day being them getting to be with each other without needing to say much at all. It was a wish he wasn't going to tell anyone, because the moment his friends found out he wanted something so simple they'd tell him about their own plans for the day and he'd then feel guilty for desiring a quiet day when everyone was planning something big and eventful for him. The attention they gave him every year on his birthday was nice, but at the same time, it wasn't the best gift for a withdrawn guy like him, and the only person who ever noticed that was Kaede, but she was powerless in getting everyone else to back off on their plans.

So every year, for as long as he'd had the group of friends, he'd been subjected to rowdy birthday parties that tended to end with people fighting, or the police being called for a noise disturbance, or people passed out where they fell because of how high-energy things were. If he could, he'd find a way to stay as far away from the plans as he could, get out of town and find somewhere to hide for the day in absolute solitude, but hurting his friends by wanting to avoid their grand gestures of kindness was not anything he was interested in doing. He was used to having to pretend to want the social interaction, and look at least somewhat thankful when people bragged about their involvement in the planning, but he wondered if anyone (other than Kaede, naturally) noticed that he wasn't being genuine.

Usually he heard word of something being planned in the weeks leading up to his birthday, but this year was different in that he wasn't hearing a thing, even getting up to a single digit number of days before. "You don't think they've given up on planning a wild birthday celebration, do you?" he asked Kaede one of those days over lunch, her shrugging to respond because she actively had her mouth full. "I mean, normally Kaito has said something by now, and if not him, then Kokichi has. Maybe they've given up for this year."

"Wouldn't you like that, though?" After swallowing the bite she'd taken, Kaede looked at Shuichi and saw the way his eyes shifted down at her question, her having hit a nerve she didn't know she could actually strike. "If you hate the attention so much, maybe you should have told them that before they've spent so many years doing this for you. But I guess that wouldn't say how they knew you didn't like it, but I guess, since it _is_ Kaito and Kokichi we're talking about, either one of them could've done some snooping…"

"Please, don't make me think that they've done that." Shuichi knew all-too-well that one of those two was plenty capable of raiding his things unannounced and making use of whatever he found, and the other was decent at digging up information but tended to let it be known he'd done so. But the thing about either of those possibilities was that they would have, without a doubt, told someone what they'd done by that point, and those someones would have let the word get to him or Kaede. Neither of them had heard a thing, and therefore it seemed unlikely that one of the two had done some freelance investigating into Shuichi's belongings. "Maybe they've finally perfected planning something in secret, so that it surprises me and they have a chance of me enjoying it."

Kaede let her head tilt to one side, her blonde hair falling off of her shoulder as she did. "You mean you'd enjoy it more if you had a surprise party thrown for you? I always thought you wanted no party at all, and that there was no way to get you to want one."

"Hey, I never said I wanted one now. I just said that if it surprised me, it might be more fun because I…well, I haven't been surprised in a long time by something like that. Life's not that fun when you can pick out suspicious behaviors and figure out things like parties and surprises are happening when you're not supposed to know anything about them." He thought about what he was saying for a moment before shaking his head, sighing at the whole ordeal. "I'd like it best if they let me have my birthday to myself this year, every single one of them. Just you, me, and some peace and quiet."

"I love how I get invited just because I'm your girlfriend, people might suspect you're up to something if they find out you want me to be there with you." Waggling her eyebrows the best she could, Kaede managed to get Shuichi to crack a smile at her comment, but he was still not the fondest towards their topic of conversation. Knowing that, she quickly got serious and turned to talking about something she thought was more exciting: an upcoming piano recital that she was going to be helping with, where her involvement was basically getting all the little kids to perform at the right time, and then finish the whole show with a piece of her own. She was always so passionate when it came to talking about her work with children and pianos that she did on the side of everything else music-related she did, and her talking about it was a major distraction from anything else going on in life.

For the rest of their meal, he let her take control of what they talked about, and by the time they were given the bill she had explained every aspect of the recital for him, almost like she was doing a rehearsal for it with someone who wasn't even involved. It helped her keep her thoughts in order about it, and it helped him think less about the birthday fiasco that was, without a doubt, looming on the horizon for him. After he'd paid for the food and they were on their way out of the little café, arm-in-arm and showing more affection than he tended to do in public, they were set to go their separate ways, but right as he went to unlink his arm from hers she spun and grabbed his opposite shoulder, her bright eyes going wide as they looked into his more subdued ones. "I just came up with a plan," she told him in a rushed voice, shaking his shoulder with every word. "It's stupid, and might not actually work, but I think I know how to give you the birthday you've been waiting for."

"If it's telling them that I'm not interested in whatever they're planning, it's not going to work," he replied, thinking of the many times he'd told Kaito he didn't like half-organized parties, and the even more times he'd told Kokichi he was not interested in dubiously legal activities. "I get that you want to help me, but I don't think it's possible when we're dealing with them."

"Oh, I know if it's dealing with them it's not going to work, but I think I know who can get them both to back off." A sneaky grin came onto Kaede's lips, and the mere sight of it made Shuichi feel somewhat concerned for who she was referring to—until he saw her mouth one of the names of the people who'd be dragged in. At once, he was no longer doubting the effectiveness of her plan, but rather the living status of her and the two guys that she was trying to get to stop what they were doing. But by that point, he knew that trying to convince her to do anything but drag people bigger, stronger, or scarier than her into the situation was hopeless, because once Kaede had a plan, she was going to stick to it. "You'll see, I'm going to get exactly what you want out of this, Shuichi. All for you."

"Yes, but…" He trailed off as she let go of him, blowing him a kiss before running down the sidewalk, heading to wherever it was that she was supposed to be after their date, and he sighed at the disappointment of having been left high and dry. "I really wish you could have come up with a way to handle this that wasn't 'bring Maki into it', because this is the last thing she needs to deal with."

The whole time he was walking back to the detective agency he worked at with his uncle, all Shuichi could think about was the potential reactions Maki would have to Kaede's request for her to step in and get at least one of the Kaito and Kokichi duo to stop whatever they were doing. Either she'd force a smile and say she'd do it, and never do anything at all, or she'd tell Kaede off for approaching her with something so stupid, or she would actually humor the request and they'd have a dead body that they'd have to hide as a collective whole group of friends. He could only hope that it was the first one, so that no one's feelings or physical state got hurt except for his own, and so that he wasn't having to implicate his best friend's other very close friend in a murder.

He was immediately thrown into solving some minor cases that had come into the agency while he'd been at lunch, so thinking more about it had to wait until he was home that night, in his quiet apartment that barely had room for him and his meager belongings in it. It may have been small, but it was just enough space that he didn't feel like he needed to invite people over to fill it, and it was rather low-maintenance so that was also a benefit to the lack of livable space. Once he was home, having put away several cases on his own and helped assist with some others with his uncle, he fell right into his usual nightly routine, cooking himself a small dinner and winding down with messaging Kaede back and forth until one of them fell asleep, her comfortably at her house with her parents who didn't care what she was doing as long as it wasn't harmful to her well-being.

If only they knew that she was actively seeking out assistance from someone who their whole friend group knew to be an assassin, no matter how much Maki denied that about herself. She was a good person, even if she may have been making ends meet through illegal methods, but Shuichi always feared the day that someone caught wind of what she did and an investigation into her background made its way to his uncle's desk, or worse, onto his own. Somehow his thoughts had derailed and he was thinking solely about Maki and what she did to sustain her life, rather than what had brought her to his mind in the first place; even as he and Kaede were sending each other romantic remarks (hers littered with hearts and emoticons, his more plain but just as meaningful), he had forgotten almost entirely about what she planned to do that involved their assassin friend.

That was not true come morning, when he woke up in a panic, having had a nightmare that included having to investigate Kaede's murder, and the only clue he had being a note she'd written explaining where she was going to be going that day and why she was going there, implicating Maki in the mess. In order to set his mind straight from that, he had to call his girlfriend and hear her sweet voice assuring him that she was alive, that she wasn't going to go visit Maki in person, and that he needed to not be so worried. Her exact words had been "Don't worry so much about it, Shuichi, I promise I've got this all under control! If I don't, then we'll cross that bridge when we get there!" and her delivery had been so cheerful, so upbeat, that going against her felt wrong. But it was hard to really swallow down all of his reservations about the matter, given how headstrong he knew her to be, so he told her that he'd try his best to not worry and left it at that.

It was only three days until his birthday at that point, and the least he could do was try to hold it together for those three days until the inevitable happened and he was forced through a birthday party he didn't want any part of. He knew that bringing up his thoughts to anyone would paint him as ungrateful and uncaring towards the people who clearly were caring about him, which was far from the truth. The thing that he disliked was the attempt at giving him a "fun" birthday party, when all he wanted was a peaceful day, he at least tolerated the people who were trying to do it for him, if not respected them greatly. If they ever listened to him and didn't put in all the effort to make him happy, when all it was going to do was frustrate him, then things would be so much easier.

For three days he was allowed to dwell on this, letting the inevitable simmer within his soul, and when he woke up on the morning of his birthday he was instantly filled to the brim with dread for what he was sure was coming. There hadn't been a single word said to him about how Kaede's attempt at stopping things had gone, and usually she was rather open about the things she was doing, so that was adding to the pile of negatives he'd built about the situation. The one solace he had was that no one had managed to get into his apartment overnight (something that _had_ happened before, and he'd threatened to get law enforcement involved if it were to happen again), which meant that whatever was coming, he was going to get it at some other point that day.

Yet…the so-called inevitable never manifested itself. He wasn't ever called to meet somewhere suspicious, nor was he bombarded with knocks at his front door from unexpected visitors. The only person who came over was Kaede, and he'd known she was coming over because she'd asked him if it was okay if she did so; when she arrived at the door she had a single balloon in one hand, and a small cake in the other. "Figured you'd appreciate something tiny like this," she explained, as he looked at the plainly-decorated cake while she still held it, not even bothered by the large "happy birthday"-adorned balloon she had with her. "It's not much, but it's something, right?"

"Uh, yeah, that's right." Peeling his eyes off of the cake, Shuichi instinctively looked behind Kaede to see if anyone else had tagged along that she was trying to hide from him, but there was no one at all. She'd really shown up on her lonesome, bringing with her exactly what they needed to have an intimate celebration with just the two of them, which had been what he'd been longing for year after year. That meant, somehow, she'd managed to do exactly what she'd set out to do when it came to his birthday, and he had to thank her as many times as he could, as many ways possible.

For them, that meant a lot of sitting on his bed, his computer set up in front of them, watching old TV shows together and talking while half underneath the blankets, the balloon tied to the knob of the front door where it would bounce in and out of their line of sight on occasion. They'd talk about what they were watching, critiquing it in any way possible—she'd comment on the score and how disjointed it seemed to be at times, while he'd bring up plot holes that any intelligent detective would have been able to pry apart in the show's canon—but even with their criticisms they were still enjoying it. After a few episodes they switched to a different show for an episode or two, still older content that they'd watched before but something dear to their hearts, and then they were back to the original show and what they'd been doing to start. They got halfway through the series that day, helped by the relative shortness of the overall show, and had their fair share of laughs and groans at what it was they were watching.

At a late point he began to doze off, finding himself leaning into her shoulder as they were watching the screen, and she responded to the act by pressing her cheek against his, whispering how much she loved him and loved being with him until he snapped back awake, sputtering apologies for his behavior. "Don't worry," she said with a giggle, "I happen to think you're really cute when you're sleepy like that. I love getting to see you when your defenses aren't as high as usual."

"That makes one of us, then," he muttered, not sure how he was actually supposed to take being told he was cute when his guard was that far down. His snappish reply made her whole demeanor change, going from bubbly to quiet in a matter of seconds, and he had to start genuinely apologizing for upsetting her over what he'd said. He knew that what upset her wasn't how he'd spoken to her, but rather the content, as she always disliked when he would put himself down. Especially on his birthday, she was going to be relentless in her attempt to get him to like himself, and he had to understand that.

The thing about Kaede's insistence that her boyfriend like himself as a person was that she was not going to back down just because he made a misstep and had to apologize for it. In fact, she was going to take that as a challenge and try to build off of it, and that was exactly what she aimed to do right then. "Ooh, how about we shake out these tired bones and go somewhere for dinner?" she suggested, eliciting a groan from him but no denial of the idea. That was enough to tell her that she could do as she wished, and after they finished the episode they were in the middle of watching they cleaned themselves up and headed out, choosing to walk to dinner at her insistence.

For being something that was suggested only because he had started falling asleep on her, it seemed awfully well-thought out of a plan, but Shuichi wasn't going to question it. It seemed natural for Kaede to have come up with some place she wanted to take him for his birthday, just to make it feel a bit more important than their lazy day together made it seem, and he wasn't going to complain as long as it was a nice place and she was his only company. As they began to approach the little café they'd dined at days beforehand (which he hadn't thought was too terrible, although it was far from being somewhere he'd suggest to go at any time), he began to wonder why she was taking him there. Perhaps she'd talked to the owner or the manager and had something set up for the day, or perhaps she was eagerly waiting a second attempt at eating there, but certainly there wasn't going to be more to it than that.

It wasn't like Kaede herself would go against every single thing he wished for the day and bring about the unwanted celebration he'd been eager to get away from, right?

The second that café door opened, he was reminded of the fact that yes, yes she would do exactly that if it meant trying to cheer him up on his special day. Standing inside the building was every single person he'd call a friend, as well as a few that were merely acquaintances, all holding party hats and cheering at his arrival. "I'm so sorry I couldn't tell you that we were doing this again this year," Kaede apologized, seeing the look of combined disdain and surprise on her boyfriend's face, "but we wanted to see how you handled getting what you wanted for _most_ of the day."

"I…don't know what to say," he managed to eke out, before he was promptly tackled by Kaito, trying to shove a party hat on his head and claiming that now it was going to be a real celebration. "H-hey, off of me! I didn't ask for any of this!"

"I know, man, but just try to enjoy it while we've got it!" Speaking with a large grin on his face, Kaito seemed to let Shuichi's apprehension to the party situation roll right off his shoulders, and he continued his attempt at getting the hat on his head until the flimsy elastic band snapped and the hat was rendered useless. "Eh, whatever, guess it's cool if you don't have a party hat, you're already wearing your other hat."

"Not anymore, he's not." Reaching into the whole mess with a quick hand, Kaede yanked the hat that was currently on Shuichi's head right off of it, sticking it on her own with a laugh. "There, someone make him look more festive! This is so super exciting, I can't wait to know what's going to happen next!"

A snicker came from across the room, courtesy of Kokichi. "That's hilarious there, Kaede, seeing as you've known what's coming next as long as the rest of us have. Since, you know, you helped plan everything and all that."

"I mean, we didn't need to tell Shuichi that…"

"I think I could've figured that out on my own, anyway," Shuichi said, having fallen victim to a hat after Kaito's second attempt had been made. "It's not exactly hard to guess that you knew this was happening from the start, and that you were trying to keep me from knowing it was going to happen. I do wish that you had just told me, but whatever, you didn't."

"Duh she didn't tell you! What's the point of a surprise party if the person being surprised is already in on it?" Kaito flicked the hat that he'd gotten on Shuichi's head, before gently punching his friend's shoulder. "Don't worry though, we don't have much goin' on at this except some fun and games and food! Nothing wild, nothing crazy, nothing Kaede didn't think you'd like."

Looking at his girlfriend and her sheepish smile, Shuichi sighed, knowing that she was trying her best to make his birthday one to remember. Even though where he was, and what he was there for, was nothing that he wanted anything to do with, just because Kaede had put so much of her own involvement into it meant that it had to be somewhat decent. She wouldn't let him suffer more than necessary, he hoped. "I'll be the judge of that," he conceded, finally giving a tiny smile at the outpouring of love his friends were showering him with for his birthday. "So…let's see what you've got to throw at me."

In the end, the party wasn't the worst thing that Shuichi had to deal with in his life, considering other things that he dealt with on the regular. It still wasn't ideal, but it was a decent enough ending to his otherwise lazy birthday, and getting to spend it with Kaede was the only thing he really, truly wanted out of the whole day, and that wish was granted over and over again.

Especially _after_ they left the café and went back to his place to finish the night together.

* * *

**A/N: and that's the last fic for the week! I have had a blast writing all these stories and I am so happy I've gotten to share them with everyone this week, I hope you all enjoyed!**


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